Utilities and Driveway

After my last post, the electric company engineer asked me to cut an additional tree and have gravel on my driveway so that their trucks could make it up my hill safely. So I finished cutting down the required trees and cleared them out of the cow pasture. One of the tree branches contained a bee hive, so dealing with that was a little tricky. My dad and I also cut down three large invasive Ailanthus trees and cut up one that fell in my yard.

Last Friday I rented a Ditch Witch (walk-behind trencher) to dig the water line trench from the road up to my yard. I ran it down the middle of my driveway and then my dad and I installed a 1" PVC water line and put in a "yard hydrant" at the back of my yard. I returned the trencher on Monday and then spent parts of the next three days filling in the trench.

Yesterday my dad and I got the relative elevations of each corner of my house and then I dug out a strip of sod around the perimeter to mark the extents of excavation. We'll string up the exact location of the house after the excavation is done.

This morning the gravel trucks came and put down two truck loads of 2" gravel and then two more loads of smaller "crusher run" gravel. I raked (feverishly!) and smoothed the gravel as well as I could between loads, but there are still some spots that need work.

I called the electric company to tell them everything is ready, so hopefully they'll install the power lines in the next couple of days.

It's been a workout of a morning, so now I'm relaxing. It's exciting to see things beginning to progress more quickly now. By this time next week I hope to be working on the house foundation! I'll try and take some pictures to show the progress. 'Til then!