Back to it...

Christmas at Mark and Torre's was wonderful, the real deal, but my upcoming move to the neighborhood was always creeping into my thoughts. Gotta rent or borrow a truck to move the outhouse and the yurt. Get the refrigerator and range delivered and hooked up. The yurt platform!

About 2" or so of snow fell immediately after the dig, and yet ANOTHER 3" or 4" Christmas night... The most recent snow is waiting up there now for me, armed with a new shovel and pushbroom.

Building is going very slow now that the ground is frozen - I'm hoping to somehow set up my Mongolian yurt for a little more living space while I wait out the winter.

We're going to focus on the yurt platform now - something fairly simple, screwed together, that could be dismantled and moved if I myself should move on someday. Legally speaking, I'm not supposed to be living in the house while it's under construction, so the yurt will be my "construction trailer."

The ground is frozen deeper every day - kind of discouraging - I can't imagine pouring the foundation in this cold, but apparently it can be done, with special cement and insulated blankets. Mark says we can do the whole foundation in one pour if we plan it right.

The woodstove is almost hooked up -
just need to screw it together and add the cap on top:

Spent parts of Xmas Eve and Xmas Day raking up after the Big Dig.
Here's the new hydrant and the water shutoff...

...and the place where there was a 5' deep trench 5 days ago:

...and this is the freshly dug foundation,
with electric water and sewer hookups ready to be integrated into the addition:

Water and Electric to the House

The well-share has now been brought onto the property, with a functioning hydrant at the parking lot; as well as electricity, temporarily outside the house, both underground. Below is the trench that made it possible - water 5 feet down, electric 2 feet down, coming up from the neighbors':

The water hydrant and shutoff to the house.

When we get the addition finished, there'll be water and electric inside, but for now this is a great improvement. The weather has been VERY snowy, with about 2 feet of snow in the last month, delaying the process at every stage. I'd hoped to have the yurt up by now. Here's the yurt (ger, for all you Mongolians) being set up at my book premiere way back in June 2006 at the Taos Solarfest:

Before the yurt goes up, I want to construct a platform for it, to keep it warm and dry. This will be the next big push before actually building the addition - the ger will be my "construction trailer."

After putting in the addition footings, and the trenching and back-filling, we got another 2" of snow...

So, on Xmas Eve, I STILL haven't moved in, but I'm much closer. Almost all of my personal belongings are up there, except what I need to work on web sites and eat and sleep. In the next week, I need to put in some kind of cat door for Browser, and pick up a few bits of furniture, like a bed, table and chairs.