Sent Wednesday 19 September 2001
This page duplicates the e-mail I sent out on the 19th of September 2001 except that I have formatted it for the web and the pictures are now embedded in the text. I also took the liberty of shrinking the pictures (they used to be so large you needed a horizontal scroll; more trouble than it's worth).
The crudity of these pictures is explained by the fact that I took them on a very cheap camera and then scanned them in. The camera was so cheap it was _almost_ a disposable. Later on it did break, so maybe it was disposable after all.
First off, an explanation/apology: My e-mail was down for about nine days. This had nothing to do with the WTC/Pentagon mess; it had a lot to do with the way my former ISP handed my real e-mail account off to the new ISP and then mishandled the hosting for cyberian.com (which forwards to that real account). In essence, cyberian.com is still being handled by the old ISP. But I think it is working now. If you sent me anything in the last few days and didn't get a response--it's nothing personal--try sending again.
If you didn't send anything, well NOW I know who my real friends are..... :-)
Here are some more pictures of the house--still kind of boring on the surface (so to speak) but a lot of significance has happened.
First picture shows the foundation done, the insulation around the exterior, but the
interior still needs to be backfilled. (Lucky I have a friend with a backhoe.)
Second picture shows the interior backfilling done. The garage area (background) has
been smoothed out but the house is still just as the backhoe left it. Once I smoothed out
inside the house I drove my car into it and drove back and forth to compact the dirt. I
probably drove about a mile/1600 m trying to get it all. It turns out that you could almost
play beach volleyball inside the foundation (67 feet by 31 feet when the standard volleyball
court is 60x30), but who would want to play beach volleyball on packed sand?
Third picture shows my car parked in the garage for the first time. (Okay, a little
imagination is required here!)
Fourth picture shows the well, putting out water. For this I had to install a temporary
electric service and get it approved by an inspector, then run power to the well, almost 250
feet away. I still haven't actually tried to drink the water. Sometimes it still looks cloudy
from the stuff they pumped down the well while drilling it. Well, if I am not drinking the water
then what am I doing with it? Read on....
Fifth picture--Time for the waste plumbing. I had to assemble this mess of stuff now because the floor is a concrete slab. I had to precisely position everything. You don't want your toilet in the hallway! And once the floor is poured any mistakes are cast in stone.
I've never worked with this kind of pipe before and I ended up having to redo a lot of it
because I only thought I was using enough glue. It leaked a lot (I plugged the lower end and
filled it with water from the well). I finally got the last leak fixed on Monday the 10th. And
a lot of pipe manufacturers got rich off of my business.
Sixth photograph: It passed inspection, and I have filled the trenches again. All those pipes
sticking up out of the ground are a hazard to navigation.
Progress is slow. I hope to get the floor poured next week--it turns out I need to bring more dirt into the house or pay for a lot more concrete; it's 5 1/2 to 6 inches/15 cm deep in there and it only needs to be 4 inches/10cm deep. I've done a lot of that work but that's on the next roll of film.
Steve