Twin Rivers Design

Kevin Kleinchester of Dreaming Creek and I met on Wednesday, January 19, 2011 to begin working on design for a new house at Twin Rivers Farm. The following was our original concept drawing.

 

We have remained pretty consistent with the central hexagon and den and dining room wings. We took much of the concept from the 207 plans. I have been touring several homes and really liked Pierce Brinkly's kitchen solution to the open floor plan. Our next work session was on January 26, 2011. We rotated the bedroom wing and added porches to the ends of the wings. Kevin is concerned about practical matters like how to frame the structure and can it be built effectively. I am more concerned with can we have the spaces we want. We are assuming that the whole structure or most of it is timber framed. We recognize (or at least I recognize) that we will look at it both ways and see if it makes sense to conventional build vs timber frame.

 

 Kevin and I met again on Tuesday, February 1. Kevin filled in details on the plans before the meeting. At this work session, we focused on filling in details so we would have drawings to present to the construction team on Wednesday, February 2.

On Wednesday, February 2, 2011 we had an on-site meeting with more of the Team. This was the first time Kevin had the opportunity to see the house site. I think everyone confirms we have an amazing house site!

Well Site:

We have a well douser on site to help find water for the house. He used a willow branch and passed it around for us to all try it. It was pretty amazing. I tried to fight the thing but it really twisted itself in my hands. He found water. The well driller found water at the same spot and believes there is a fracture and he wants to drill a bit further down stream on the same fracture. He quoted $2600 for drilling the well to up to 300 feet. I had expected it to cost $10 per foot. Seems like we are getting a bargain. Will have to wait and see if we actually get water. I gave the well driller authorization to proceed on drilling the well. I told him I was looking for 12 to 15 gallons a minute with storage. This should be a generous well if we can find the water.

Additional Clearing.

Jason Harvey came on site. We still have the burn pile from earlier clearing earthwork activities. I want Jason to go ahead and burn the burn pile before the spring burn ban (or restriction of burn hours) starts and I want him to keep clearing out the bottom.. and Massey asked him to clear back to the well site.

Power.

We are going to go ahead and see if we can get electricity to the house site. We have sited the electric box and know where the underground power should go. Massey is really doing a great job of looking towards the future to make sure the underground utilities stay out of the way in the future.

Schedule.

I would really like to do as much as we can to get the project under construction this spring. The most important thing now is to nail down the footprint of the structure.

People:

Claudia Lawton (comfortfarm@verizon.net) drove to Twin Rivers with Kevin and me. She had never been to Twin Rivers before. She and Kevin spent a bit of time in heads down conversation about the design. Kevin was very excited about the ideas they came up with. I am very excited to see the progress.

Pat Fincham met us on site. He is our general contractor.

Massey Saunders, survey and project management. Supervising earthwork, roadway installation clearing, well contractor and generally looking out for the project. In real life he is a surveyor. He knows everyone in Nelson County and is helping me find qualified people for immediate tasks.

Kenny Sites is the well driller. He helped site the well and has authorization to proceed on the well.