Images of the Streams Rushing after mid-Oct Rain

To Tha Bridge

We're making progress on the bridge as well. We had a civil engineer in and he gave Matt ideas to simplify the design and construction. We have three drawings and we hope that cost and time will be less since it'll be more conventional. We might even get a cool wood tripod span out of it.

Nearing Conceptual End

We've had a couple of meetings with Matt over the past weeks and are nearing the end of the conceptual design. He's done some great work in refining the model. We're still working around a similar premise to what has been posted here but it is amazing how a few tweaks can change things. The big conceptual breakthrough was to make the entrance at the back (west) side on-grade. We were struggling with side entrances through the deck and this brought it all together.

The other big advance is to have a semi-tower on the north side of the house which would have the mechanical on the base (semi-basement) and second bedroom and office above. The top floor will float a bit above the roof line of the main house to let in light and now we can mount the solar panels up high on the tower and have to clear fewer trees. We also should get some great north light in those rooms. He also designed in some really fabulous half stair cases to get to the different half floors.

Oh, and we have two builders who are going to take a look at the project. Matt will bring in one more. We hope this will let us find one and sanity check the bids. They'll be brought in in mid-Nov.

Minimiam

Not home stuff (except if they'll sell you these to put in your home) but the photos of these miniatures are amazing:

http://mapage.noos.fr/minimiam/go.htm