More Power To You

Bandera Electric COOP started wiring in power this morning as projected.  New transformer is mounted, poles are in and wiring has begun.  Will go out later today (after the Eclipse) and see if the meter loop and breaker panel are in.

So much steel!

The foundation crew is nearly finished laying in steel rebar for the support beams and slab.  All 1/2" rebar wire tied at every crossing or joint.  An Amazing thing to see!

Concrete pour is now scheduled for Wednesday morning, early!

Foundation

Foundation Construction

After excavating our lot so that the pad was level the concrete contractor came in and lined up the home and garage foundations.  Forms were placed and then a small backhoe came in and form trenches were dug along the outer portions of the foundation (Exterior beam/footing), along areas where load bearing walls would be placed and also along evenly spaced areas forming what looked liked a grid of support beams Interior beams).

Exterior Beam

Interior Beam

After the trenching was done the construction crew literally bagged limestone and caliche material to provide an inner support wall for the foundation perimeter and support beam areas. 

The bagging was done by laying out a sheet of black plastic, filling an area along the edge with about 6" of fill then pulling the plastic back, laying in more fill and then looping the plastic out and repeating.  The edges look like plastic sand bags have been stacked up.

In areas where a stoop is planned actual sand bags are used.

Next comes the rough in plumbing which will be placed in and around the fill and then the concrete crew will come back in and do the steel reinforcing work.

Forms

With the site prep work completed the concrete contractor and his crew showed up first thing Wednesday morning.  They went right to work and before I knew it our new home was starting to take shape.

They worked till late Saturday bagging the foundation and moving in crushed limestone to level out the area under where the slab will be.  More pictures next week as they continue working on the foundation and rough plumbing work starts.

Site Prep

Our concrete contractor came out and staked out location for the house and garage and we have about a 6ft slope to deal with.  Called in the excavator that we used last year for lot clearing and he started clearing the lot on 1 Aug.

The dozer started cutting off the top soil while the Bobcat began moving rock away from our test cut around the home site.

 With all of the equipment cutting, moving and hauling I was surprised that there were no collisions.

After a full day of excavation we finished up rolling and back filling a few low spots.  Should be finished by this afternoon and the concrete contractor should start forming up the foundation tomorrow.

We are hoping to move in to our new home by the end of Jan so we are off to a good start.  Hoping we can keep up the momentum!

We are settled!

We are in our long term rental now and have taken final delivery of our PODS shipments, stored safely away in a large climate controlled storage unit.  We've set up the rental with much of our belongings and are working on home construction.

We closed on our construction loan a week ago, have water on our property and the local electric coop is staged to get us power in the next week or so.  We've done some basic excavation on the property and hope to get started in earnest later this week.

The water meter is set and I've installed a 1.25" line down onto the property.  Need to have a back hoe come in and chunk through some rock and will extend the line on down.

Have had good luck establishing new Doctors and Dentists and have a really great local grocery store with every type of shopping imaginable an hour away in San Antonio.

Getting Started

We settled into our long-term rental and have just about finished transferring our stuff from PODS to local climate controlled storage. I met with our builder and his concrete contractor yesterday and we established the basic site placement for our new home and garage.  Really felt good seeing the foundation layout on our property.  Closing on the Construction loan is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon so we both feel like we are moving ahead.

Then I made a trip to San Antonio to run some errands and took the back way home through Bandera.  A very nice drive after making two long distance trips on I-10 recently.

The Kegerator is setup with 1/4 bbl of Lagunitas IPA, we've done some small repairs in our rental, and have moved most of our stuff swapping out kitchen tools and appliances.