Days 1 & 2: The Driveway

So Day 1, I set foot on the property and started to walk all around to get a firmer idea of where exactly the build site would be, and where the best place for the driveway would be.

The brush is quite thick along the lower part of the property by the road, and the hill that the build site sits on top of is quite rocky and uneven with a good deal of trees and little cacti spread throughout. So you rarely ever walk in straight lines.

Here’s a peak at what I think is the mildest angle there is for the driveway:

And here’s what it looked like after Day 2, which entailed clearing a path using a weed-eater with a brush-cutting blade on it and a pickaxe. And let me tell you, some of those bushes have tap-roots 6 inches thick, and they are quite sturdy!

Ironically, I took out a full-sized stump that barely put up any effort at all by comparison, but I guess that’s because it was long dead and pretty brittle. I’ve never used a pickaxed to chop wood like that before, but it worked quite well.

One of my neighbors came along, and come to find out, they actually install driveways for a living – or at least that’s one of the things they do. And even though I had just done most of the clearing for the drive, you can tell that it’s still got quite a slant to it, and what might not be obvious at first glance is that the approach from the road would be pretty steep even after putting in a culvert to drive over.

So he suggested that I angle the approach more diagonally, which would make it more of a one-way drive, or at least easier to enter from the other direction – which of course is the opposite direction of what I will normally ever be coming from. More on that in a second.

But more to the point, I asked if he’d mind giving me a quote to even it out for me. He said sure, and I gave him my email address. He said something about taking some measurements, but in hindsight, I don’t know when exactly he plans to take these measurements, and I had just bought a 165ft measuring tape earlier that day that was sitting in my Tahoe that could’ve been used right then and there.

That was the day before yesterday, and still nothing from him. Though in fairness, while I can do clearing without a permit, any sort of groundwork with machinery would without a doubt be in permit territory.

I went back today to give some serious thought to the driveway, with the following options in mind:

1. Make the entrance to the drive straight in, but maybe try to pull some dirt down to lessen the incline;
2. Make a more diagonal approach like the neighbor suggested, and maybe just do a bit of a U-ey (You-ey?) when coming from the other direction; or
3. Make a whole new diagonal approach from the other direction – the kicker of which would mean that all of my back-breaking work the previous day might be for nothing.

Eventually, I decided on option #2 with the thinking that I can always add another diagonal approach from the other way some other time if I want.

For now, I really just want to get up to the build site so that I can park my RV up there and actually live on the property. Plus, I wanna be able to get other equipment up there, like the other guy I talked to on Marketplace who offered to dig these holes I’ll need for the piers for the house.

There will be about 20 of them, each 18” in diameter, and about 5’ deep. That’d be a whooooole lot of digging if done by hand, so I’m totally fine with $150 for transportation and $20/hole –  thanks to the mechanical advantage of the skidsteer with an auger attachment that the guy has.

Like this one, for example:

Of course, that’s assuming we can even go down that far since I don’t really know anything about the soil at this point, and I’m not sure how far down it might go before hitting rock.

If it does hit solid rock, that’s fine too, and I can just drill a hole in it to embed some rebar, which I can then pour the footers on and essentially ‘pin’ the pier to the rock. But you just don’t know what’s down there until you start digging.

Part of that is an exploratory dig that’ll be necessary for the soil evaluation for the septic because the whole point of that is to determine how well the ‘effluent’  will drain, which you need a special license to do.

And it just so happens that the other neighbors I met when I was last here – Brandon and Grace – are certified to do just that!

Meanwhile, the sellers refused to accept payment in the form of money orders, oddly. They said they’ve never dealt with money orders before and know nothing about them.

I explained that they’re the same as cash, and that I would even go as far as driving 2.5 hours each way to Colorado Springs – which is where their nearest bank location is – so that I could deposit it directly into their account. They literally wouldn’t even have to lift a finger, and yet they refused!

It’s the weirdest thing. Here I am with this large lump sum of cash/money orders that I’ve worked very diligently for a long time for – a significant piece of life you might say – and here they are making it difficult for me to give it them!

Needless to say, I’m not happy about that, but I’m trying to kinda grin and bear it …and take notes for a future review.

I had reached out to the title company last week, and had submitted an order for a ‘title commitment’, which apparently just means that they’ll do the legal research on the property and offer me a title policy for it (in case issues arise in the future, such as a long lost heir of some previous seller; accidental typos on the official paperwork which might nullify the sale; or something along those lines).

Well, I filled out their order form on Thursday or Friday, and they had said that it would “most likely” be done next/this week. Well here it was being Tuesday, and I still hadn’t even received a notification that they were even working on it. So I emailed the gal I was talking to, and asked for confirmation that they received the order and are working on it. That was at about noon, and I’ve still not heard anything (at about 6pm) when previously, correspondence took no more than an hour or two.

So between the county, the seller, the title company, and even the friendly neighbors, nobody seems to be in any sort of hurry except for me.

I did intentionally give my back a break today though since it was sore enough to interfere with my sleep last night. It was nice to get some frustration out with that pickaxe though, haha.

So tomorrow, I’m gonna head back over there – which is an 8-minute drive from where I’m camped out at a local spot by a little lake. In fact, here are some pictures from when I first arrived:

I learned quickly though that the mosquitos are fierce! I’m not entirely sure yet, but it seems like that’s mostly just in the evenings though.

In fact, mosquitos are the main reason why I called it a day at about 8pm on Day 1, and I’m rather disappointed that they’re a significant factor on my property because they simply weren’t there when I was checking out the property originally.

Not sure yet whether I’ll need to get one of those dorky-looking head-nets:

But for sure, I’ll need a screened-in porch as opposed to an open deck like I had planned …unless I could figure out some way to do mosquito netting over an otherwise-uncovered deck.

The thought even crossed my mind that I could get some bats to help combat the mosquitos, but I suppose bug zappers might be a bit more doable since you don’t have to worry about those getting into your house, haha!

Anyway, that’s all for now. Until next time…