On Saturday, we went up to see how Gull Lake Ranch was coming along. Jayson had told us he had his crew up there and we were curious to see what they had done. Well, of course, by the time we got up on Saturday morning, a snow storm had dumped about 10cm of the white stuff at our current place in Knutsford . We fired up the Big Red Truck (our '97 Ford F250 powerstroke diesel crew cab), picked up Carol's son, Alex, and motored up the hill to the ranch. Now, I said we got 10cm of snow in Knutsford, but it was more like 20cm at the ranch in Barnhartvale! The good news was that Jayson's guys had done an awesome job of ploughing out the driveway, and although there was lots of fresh snow, we easily drove all the way in to the house site. We did see the D5 Cat dozer and a big track hoe parked about half way up the driveway.
From where the house will sit, it was easy to see where the boys had started putting in the "new" driveway. They had dug substantial ditches on either side of the new road to give the water a place to go. It's nice to have people working for you who know what they are doing! It is so exciting to see things actually starting to happen!
Joey had her usual full-speed race around the property, at one point hopping like a deer through some particularly deep snow by the new driveway. Lots of animal tracks criss-crossed everything keeping her busy following all the interesting smells. She really does love it up here and I'm sure she thinks we got the place just for her!
Monday, January 31, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
It's Happening!
We have been waiting for our excavating/well/septic contractor to finish up a job in Savona so he could start work on our road/driveway and get the water system installed. Last night while on our way home, Jayson called to say he had his equipment on site and had spent the day plowing the snow from the road in preparation to start the real work. He suggested we take a different route across the property for our driveway, instead of the meandering track that is the existing road. The new route will be a little more direct. So, today he starts building the new road! Yay! We're finally underway. It seems so real now!
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Linwood Homes Kingsbury II
We will be building a modest house on our property - a Kingsbury II from Linwood Homes. Linwood has an amazing reputation with a lineup of designs from small cabins through to enormous post and beam mansions. At a little over 1,200 square feet on two levels plus 800 sq.ft. in the walkout basement, our place falls somewhere in between. We love the layout! When we were choosing plans that we liked, independently, we both chose the same house so we figure that this is the right one for us. 
It will be very similar to the house shown here, but ours will have the HardiPlank siding instead of the cedar. Also, ours will have a daylight basement with large windows matching those on the main floor and a french door entry into the basement. The floorplan shown here is the one we will be building.Our house will be somewhat unique in that we will have 10 PV modules on the roof supplying power to a large battery bank. Our water will be gravity-fed to storage tanks from the spring a hundred metres above the homesite. Heat will come from a wood burning stove, propane fired hot water tanks, and later, a solar hot water system feeding hydronic heating tubes in the floors. We are excited about the prospect of living "off grid" and will focus a lot of effort on these systems.
Monday, January 24, 2011
To bring you up to date...
Carol and I (Mike) recently purchased a quarter section (160 Acres) of raw land in Barnhartvale, BC, about 35 minutes drive SE from Kamloops, BC. As stated before, the land is undeveloped. There is no power, water or septic installed and the road in sucks. All of these issues need to be addressed before any actual construction can begin.
We weren't actually looking to take on a project of this scope when we first started looking for a new home. Ideally, we thought, we wanted a small acreage with a nice house, barn and facilities for keeping a few horses. Riding has been a passion of Carol's since she was a little girl and this was her opportunity to live her dream. We spent months scouring the local listings and viewing a few places. It quickly became apparent that anything that fit our wish list and was close enough to town to allow comfortably commuting to our business, was outside of our modest price range. Fortunately, early in the process, we hooked up with Jackie Brommeland, a local realtor. She was great to work with and had gone through a similar quest a few years ago when she and her family moved to Kamloops from the coast.
Right away, we learned that all rural properties fall into 1 of 4 groups - properties that have water; properties that have power; properties that have both water and power; and properties that have neither. Depending on which group a given property belongs to, the value of that property will vary dramatically.
We had been up to look at a 40 acre chunk that fell into the "has water, but no power" group. This property was not for us as the house was a little too rustic for both our tastes, and while 40 acres is a good sized piece of land, it wasn't what we had pictured in our mind's eye. It was flat and uninteresting with no real "view" from the house other than the various run-down outbuildings. However, it was intriguing to see how they had overcome the lack of grid-supplied electricity. They had installed a variety of solar PV (photo voltaic) modules, a wind generator, a significant battery bank and a serious inverter system to convert the DC voltage stored in the batteries to more familiar 110V AC. It got us thinking...
Jackie mentioned that she had listed a beautiful piece of property a few kilometres from her own house. It was 160 acres, or a "quarter section", but had no power and a very poor access road. But, it did have a good water supply, with an old well used by the original settlers 100 years ago and a spring fed by an underground stream. We arranged to go and view it a few days later.
It was quite a trek from town, not too far but the last 14 kms were on gravel roads and the driveway, Sinclair Road, was really a 4WD test track with huge ruts and boggy sections preventing all but the very adventurous from getting in. But once we got there and took a look around...Wow! It was love at first sight for both of us. The place was gorgeous, with varied terrain, forested areas and wide open clearings on a mostly gentle slope with a spectacular view of forests and the mountains beyond. We were home!
We weren't actually looking to take on a project of this scope when we first started looking for a new home. Ideally, we thought, we wanted a small acreage with a nice house, barn and facilities for keeping a few horses. Riding has been a passion of Carol's since she was a little girl and this was her opportunity to live her dream. We spent months scouring the local listings and viewing a few places. It quickly became apparent that anything that fit our wish list and was close enough to town to allow comfortably commuting to our business, was outside of our modest price range. Fortunately, early in the process, we hooked up with Jackie Brommeland, a local realtor. She was great to work with and had gone through a similar quest a few years ago when she and her family moved to Kamloops from the coast.
Right away, we learned that all rural properties fall into 1 of 4 groups - properties that have water; properties that have power; properties that have both water and power; and properties that have neither. Depending on which group a given property belongs to, the value of that property will vary dramatically.
We had been up to look at a 40 acre chunk that fell into the "has water, but no power" group. This property was not for us as the house was a little too rustic for both our tastes, and while 40 acres is a good sized piece of land, it wasn't what we had pictured in our mind's eye. It was flat and uninteresting with no real "view" from the house other than the various run-down outbuildings. However, it was intriguing to see how they had overcome the lack of grid-supplied electricity. They had installed a variety of solar PV (photo voltaic) modules, a wind generator, a significant battery bank and a serious inverter system to convert the DC voltage stored in the batteries to more familiar 110V AC. It got us thinking...
Jackie mentioned that she had listed a beautiful piece of property a few kilometres from her own house. It was 160 acres, or a "quarter section", but had no power and a very poor access road. But, it did have a good water supply, with an old well used by the original settlers 100 years ago and a spring fed by an underground stream. We arranged to go and view it a few days later.
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