October 18, 2005

• Finally, an update on the namesake of this blog: the actual house/home/oikos we are building!

  First, as a family we have really enjoyed the rain this weekend... but it has probably damaged our foundation diggings. I'll go by there tomorrow and photograph it, see how it has held up in the downpour. It seems like every time we get close to pouring concrete, something delays us. At least this time it was Mother Nature instead of an inspector.

  That said, we really have made a decent amount of progress in the past month. Here's what it looked like in September, when our pads passed compression/moisture tests and we began putting in the forms:
  

  Here's a shot of Lugo, the concrete-&-foundation guy, and his sidekick Miguel. These guys have worked hard and fast, making up for a lot of the time lost waiting for inspections etc. Behind Lugo you can see the alley stretching to the east of us:
  

  ...and here's the other side, the alley going west from the back of our lot:
  

  As you can see, one of the issues in the future will be the condition of the alley. Actually, it's looking great in these photos: the City recently cleaned it up and dumped aggregate to fill the huge potholes from last Spring. But by midwinter it will be deeply rutted again, standing stagnant water, garbage, broken furniture dumped in heaps, etc. I'm hoping to convince the city to pave it and even install locked gates at each end to prevent the illegal dumping. They have done this to other alleys nearby, and it makes a huge difference.

  See last week's post for the most recent photo of our house (pre-downpour!).

  But, as I have said before, building the physical house is just one part of our task. We are also building a home, a family to dwell in the physical house (that's the family updates etc. that have been most common on this blog), and a social connection to the neighborhood too. I'll soon post more on that latter concept.

  • 6:44 pm
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