The First Post

BACKGROUND
Long before the first post was a walk in the snow. Like Pierre Trudeau, the last intelligent First Minister the Canadian Government has had (regardless of political stripe), Ruth & I went for a walk in the snow sometime this past February. If I recall correctly, even Judee (our 17 year-old death-defying Phoenix of a Yorkshire Terrier) accompanied Rebus, Ruth & I for this momentous two-mile trudge.

When we arrived back at 264 Niagara Street (now spelled Niagra by even PhDs since the advent of Viagra), we had agreed to explore the possibility of building a country home. What was momentous was the fact that Ruth was prepared to consider my acting as general contractor, plumber, electrician, and carpenter's assistant. She had experienced my very vocal, expletive-filled renovations of the cottage, and had been counselled by the fruit of my loins not to allow me to pursue any further building projects. What's fortunate is that our future neighbours and longtime friends, Jim & Johanna Rodger – Johanna, really – managed to find the right analogy for Ruth. She compared my frustrations with renovation with altering a wedding dress (which Ruth has done) with the relative simplicity of sewing a new wedding dress (which Ruth has also done many times). The light went on for Ruth, and here we are well down the build process.

Ruth's concerns were reasonable, as I have been known to use foul language and furious invective in the completion of complicated renovation projects at the cottage. Time is always of the essence when at the cottage. Then there's the rot, the lime disease-infested deer mouse poop, the blastomycosis, the nothing-ever-square-0r-true, the fact that I've never been a lake-lover/cottage-dweller type, that the cottage has been an "I'm not on the motorcycle with my beloved" interloper.

All of that aside, I did manage to get Ruth to allow that I'd been a happy builder of our storage shed back on West Gate; that I'd been a non-profane builder of my motorcyle workshop on Viagra (strike that) Niagara St.

Long story short, we began exploring rural properties the week following. By April 21st, we had settled on an 80-acre parcel of land on Road 88N in the R.M. of Rockwood, 21 miles north of Winnipeg's Perimeter Hwy (50°18'06.95" N, 97°21'07.90" W on Google Earth). The offer was presented to Don & Diane Larson by Teulon realor Ted Hodgkinson and, within 24 hours, accepted. Following are two views of the site on April 19th.
We began the process of investigating house plans, preparing our Niagara home for sale, budgeting potential costs. For me, as a somewhat reluctant retiree and unpublished writer, this project offered an rich complex of objectives: to capitalize on the hopeful increase in value of our Niagara home; to give me a major project into which to sink my skills and efforts; to build a new home for considerably less than the equity in our mortgage-free Niagara home; to have a new country home that was worth considerably more than the cash investment: in short, to add both a sense of personal contribution to our long-term welfare (in the face of a general economic meltdown) and a sense of personal development and worth (in the face of a disappointing response to my three-year manuscript development process).

On June 8th, a few days after the sale of our Niagara home (one week after being listed), we began the process of realizing this multifactorial dream.

Today is August 2nd. There have been a number of bumps over the past two months but, as of this coming Tuesday/Wednesday, we'll have basement walls and verandah/porch/garage piers poured. From here to there eventually.

Let me describe the parcel of land I now call Ruth's Ridge. Its legal description is the West 1/2 of SE 26-15/1E, R.M. of Rockwood. It is situated 4.5 miles west of Manitoba's Hwy. #7 on Road 88N. The 80 acres is on the north side of the road (1320' x 2640') and is bisected by poplar trees running the length of the sand ridge. Locals say this has been a rural byway for as long as anyone remembers. Ed James, our Welsh neighbour to the south, says an old-timer says he used to ride his horse from several miles south of our property along the ridge up to Poplarfield to go courting his future wife.

The Poplars are interspersed with the odd Scrub Oak and other volunteers, with the treeline averaging about 200' in width.

George Taplin (Taplin Earthworks) came highly recommended by Jim & Johanna. He has become an invaluable resource in developing this project. He brought his trackhoe in and sank six test-holes to determine sub-surface conditions. To our chagrine, we found that the six feet of sand we were rather expecting below the shallow surface layer of loam was water-logged from the 4' level to the clay at 6'. This fact, combined with the positioning of the property in the topography, meant that we were facing some very challenging sub-surface water issues for the build and beyond.

All water wants to run south-east across our property, heading for the Jackfish Creek one mile to the East and, from there, on to Lake Winnipeg. Unfortunately, the playground-quality sand under our treeline inhibits the flow of said subsoil moisture over the clay and on to the Jackfish. Further, the sand posed challenges to the drilling and pouring of piles, and the uncertainty of the firmness of the clay at 6' below grade creates concerns about the firmness of our foundation. These questions would plague me until July 8th.

In the meantime, we worked with longtime acquaintance, Bruce Boehr with Parkside Lumber in Winkler, to refine and customize a house concept we'd found online. By June 19th we had an engineer's stamp on the foundation plan.


I had also been clearing trees for the driveway and the build-site. By June 24th, over 60 Poplars and a few Oaks had been felled, topped, cut to 16" lengths, stacked and cleaned up. I also used my first purchase, a used John Deere garden tractor, to mow the entire length of the clearing down the centre of the ridge.

On June 29th, the new access road was installed. I have to say a few words about Brian Korotash, the R.M.'s Maintenance Foreman. I had called him early in our exploratory process to ask about a particular property for sale. Almost by reflex, he offered to show me around the R.M. to give me a sense of the issues affecting various potential build sites. I have to say he was an amazing ambassador and cemented our decision to follow Jim & Johanna's endorsement of this area of the province.

That same day, June 29th, we established our builder's insurance policy and my nephew, Davis Toews, and his associate, Delaeno Rempel, visited the property for the first time to mark out the construction site. Davis is an accomplished concrete worker and carpenter. He has built a number of homes and has been in the construction sector for about 20 years. Delaeno a fully certified journeyman carpenter and finish carpenter. I felt that Ruth & I were in good hands with their expertise.

On July 3rd, George returned with his trackhoe to develop a swale for drainage along the west side of the ridge, and to ensure flow through a culvert at the 1/4 mile mark along the ridge.

By July 7th, the lot grade was done. The following day I made the decision to amend the construction plan by switching from drill & pile to pad & pier. The sand made any kind of drilling and concrete pouring an iffy prospect, so the plan became to excavate a much larger hole to allow for setting pads for each of the 18 garage piers and the 7 porch/verandah piers.

On July 13th, Sonny of Interlake Drilling managed to find a day to drill our well. He, Rod & Jordan showed up around 9 a.m. and, by evening, they had sunk a well to 205'. The water is static at 100' inside the 5" casing, with a flow-rate of 15-20 gallons/minute. That same day, Davis & Delaeno built the pad forms, while I built the most important component of the project – the House of Gord, more commonly known as an outhouse.

Finally, on July 16th, one day short of four weeks since application, I was issued a building permit. We were go for build.

Taplin Earthworks returned to the site on July 20th, this time in the persons of Matthew & Evan Taplin. Matthew seems destined to become the third generation of Taplins in the business while, for Evan, this is a good summer job to break up his marketing studies at Red River College.

George showed up soon after with the tandem truck, when it was decided that the tight excavation site and the size of the hole dictated removal of material to the adjacent field. Over the next 1.5 days, 98 truckloads of sand were moved into the field, with piles arrayed around the hole where possible. Over coffee after completion of the excavation, George declared this the "ugliest hole I've ever dug."

In the ensuing ten days, we've added Delaeno's brother, Nathan, to the crew. We've built the footing forms, placed the pad forms, had our first inspection by Deryl Brook (assistant building inspector with the South Interlake Planning District), poured concrete for same, stripped the footings, have prepared the steel for the piers, and have almost completed the erection of the ICFs (insulated concrete forms) for the basement.

I've also had the experience of installing my own electrical meter unit and temporary service (I had my wiring plan approved by Manitoba Hydro). It's a shock to learn that Hydro has invested over $30,000 at no cost to us for the delivery of power to our site.

Another pleasant surprise was finding hardpan at about the level of our basement footings. The base is so hard, in fact, that typical 2x4 stakes could not be used to secure the footing frames. We had to resort to lengths of rebar, the holes for which had to be pre-drilled with a Hilti concrete drill. The theme song for our new home... the Anglican hymn "How firm a foundation."

Into this hardpan I had to jackhammer a 30"x36"x22" hole for the sump pit. Ruth says I'm looking really ripped with all this physical labour. I respond by saying I wish I didn't feel quite so shredded.

On into the third week of the build tomorrow.