Monday, March 29, 2010
Garage - Inspected and delayed
We passed inspection by the county this morning, but the weather has turned too bad to pour concrete tomorrow, so we are postponing until after Wednesday's storm has passed, and will resume work on Friday. Today the electrician finished his work on the pipe that carries the power, and the Tuffshed foreman Mike visited to inspect the site and check and adjust the position of the hold-down bolts that are set into the foundation.
My CMG paper on Crunching Data In the Cloud is published in MeasureIT
The slides are also available at http://www.slideshare.net/adrianco/crunch-your-data-in-the-cloud-with-elastic-map-reduce-amazon-emr-hadoop - and MeasureIT has a PDF of the whole paper at http://www.cmg.org/measureit/
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Garage - Working on Saturday
The concrete team were back today, putting in more rebar and tidying everything up. Chris Ramoutar the Electrician was also here putting in a 2-inch pipe to carry power to the garage. I'm having a high spec 220V and 200Amps dedicated circuit configured so that it's ready to recharge electric cars in the future. I got a work-out clearing up the felled fir tree and chipping the small branches, and collecting large rocks that had been dug up, and arranging them around the pond.
Here's a view from the deck, you can see the apron on the right, and the garage foundation on the left, and Chris working in the trench that takes the power line.
Here's a view from where the driveway will be as it joins the apron, you can see the walkway to the left of the garage.
Later that evening some very confused deer wandered over the foundations, since it has been built over their usual path from the forest out to the front yard.
Here's a view from the deck, you can see the apron on the right, and the garage foundation on the left, and Chris working in the trench that takes the power line.
Here's a view from where the driveway will be as it joins the apron, you can see the walkway to the left of the garage.
Later that evening some very confused deer wandered over the foundations, since it has been built over their usual path from the forest out to the front yard.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Garage Site - rebar ready
Another stop motion video at 30s intervals shows most of the day's work. The tree that was falling over was pushed back the other way and cut up, and they added the parking "apron" in front of the garage.
There is a 4ft wide walkway along the side of the garage by the house, so the main pad is 36 by 36ft. It slopes to the right by three inches over that width so it will drain. The walkway slopes away from the garage by one inch. The apron is 26ft deep, 36ft wide and slopes by 12 inches (4%). The driveway will connect to the side of the apron that is nearest the house.
There is a 4ft wide walkway along the side of the garage by the house, so the main pad is 36 by 36ft. It slopes to the right by three inches over that width so it will drain. The walkway slopes away from the garage by one inch. The apron is 26ft deep, 36ft wide and slopes by 12 inches (4%). The driveway will connect to the side of the apron that is nearest the house.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Garage Site - digging the foundations
Today the new leach-field pipe was inspected, and the foundations were dug, I did a stop-motion video using iStopMotion on an old MacOS laptop looking down from the house, and most of the day's work is compressed into one minute.
Tomorrow they will do the detailed preparations for the pour on Monday of the garage slab itself (6" thick), perimeter foundation (at least 18" deep, more on the downhill side where it is on in-fill), a walkway down the side of the garage, an "apron" in front of the garage to park on, and pads for the propane tank and generator.
Tomorrow they will do the detailed preparations for the pour on Monday of the garage slab itself (6" thick), perimeter foundation (at least 18" deep, more on the downhill side where it is on in-fill), a walkway down the side of the garage, an "apron" in front of the garage to park on, and pads for the propane tank and generator.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Garage Site - full speed ahead
Pictures taken this morning, before digging started for the new leach field pipe that's getting inspected and filled back in on Thursday. The foundation layout and trenching will be done on Thursday and Friday, hopefully pouring concrete Monday and inspections on Tuesday. Everything just went from glacially slow to full speed....
In the first picture, taken from a window in the house, the white blob is the propane tank, and you can see the leaning tree.
The second picture is looking back from by the tree. The two low black things by the house are the caps for the septic tank.
I'm setting up a stop motion camera, will try to capture the building process. The MacOS iStopMotion app seems to work fine and has a five day free trial, so we will see how that goes.
In the first picture, taken from a window in the house, the white blob is the propane tank, and you can see the leaning tree.
The second picture is looking back from by the tree. The two low black things by the house are the caps for the septic tank.
I'm setting up a stop motion camera, will try to capture the building process. The MacOS iStopMotion app seems to work fine and has a five day free trial, so we will see how that goes.
Garage Permit - now the fun starts
I went into the county office and picked up the permit, paid them some more money to cover their costs of inspecting the work as we do it. They gave me back one of the marked up copies of the final site and building plans, and the permit sheet, and I stopped off at a Fedex office to get several copies made. Next stop is Tuffshed, to talk to the foreman who gets it built, and the concrete contractor (Jose Amaya Concrete of Morgan Hill) who normally works with Tuffshed. Jose is available immediately so we may actually get going fairly quickly. First step is to mark out the foundation and pour it.
The new septic tank connection pipe is going in today and being inspected tomorrow.
The new septic tank connection pipe is going in today and being inspected tomorrow.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
Garage plans approved
The county turned around the final update immediately and I got a letter in the mail today! Now I just need to visit them to get the actual permit document.
I'm getting started with the first step next week...
I'm getting started with the first step next week...
Solar Power - Spring Equinox Update
Spring is here, and we just had a few clear days, shown below. The sunrise and sunset are about 12 hours apart. We installed the system just before the fall equinox, so we now have a good calibration of the output levels through the least sunny part of the year, from now on it will be interesting to track the output as we go to the longest day.
Actual average output over the last 200 or so days is about 14.3 KWh/day. Yesterday was 22.5 KWh, and at the winter solstice low point it was 16 KWh on a clear day as previously blogged.
Actual average output over the last 200 or so days is about 14.3 KWh/day. Yesterday was 22.5 KWh, and at the winter solstice low point it was 16 KWh on a clear day as previously blogged.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Garage Plan Resubmitted
This morning I took the requested clarifications on the building design into the county offices. We should hear back in a week or two, it's minor stuff so I hope this is the last step. We already have our permit for the leach field repair, so I'm starting on that work. We got the septic tank pumped and inspected (it was in good condition) this week, and filed the inspection results with the county, so the next step is to put in a new re-routed pipe and diversion valve between the tank and the leach field.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Garage Plan Detail
To get everything approved we had to survey the land and get a detailed plan drawn up by a Civil Engineer - we used Terry Szewczyk and he was helpful, competent and kept the costs to a minimum. The picture below is a detail from one of the drawings, which were produced at 1inch to 20ft scale, and shows the important part where the garage goes. For some reason the contour lines altitude is shown based around 2000ft, whereas the real altitude is about 2400ft, but no-one seems to care if that aspect of it is accurate.
Our first step is to replace the pipe that goes from the septic tank to the diversion valve and the remaining leach field, so we start by getting the tank emptied (which needs to be done every few years anyway). The pipe has to dive down a bit then go across under the concrete "apron" that will lead up to the garage, and it won't be buried very deep, so we will be putting down a 4" pipe that is placed inside a 6" pipe for the part that goes under the driveway, to give it extra protection from being crushed.
The final detailed changes we need on the building design plan are now in hand (the layout plan shown above is already approved), so I'm back to the county office again next week to resubmit them and hopefully get the permit.
The other details you can see on the plan are the electrical connection, which will be a 220V -200Amp dedicated circuit capable of charging electric cars one day. The propane tank will be relocated, and hooked up to a generator and the house. There is also a water connection to a fire sprinkler system.
Our first step is to replace the pipe that goes from the septic tank to the diversion valve and the remaining leach field, so we start by getting the tank emptied (which needs to be done every few years anyway). The pipe has to dive down a bit then go across under the concrete "apron" that will lead up to the garage, and it won't be buried very deep, so we will be putting down a 4" pipe that is placed inside a 6" pipe for the part that goes under the driveway, to give it extra protection from being crushed.
The final detailed changes we need on the building design plan are now in hand (the layout plan shown above is already approved), so I'm back to the county office again next week to resubmit them and hopefully get the permit.
The other details you can see on the plan are the electrical connection, which will be a 220V -200Amp dedicated circuit capable of charging electric cars one day. The propane tank will be relocated, and hooked up to a generator and the house. There is also a water connection to a fire sprinkler system.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
WiFi upgrade
My five year old wifi hardware got flaky and slow, so I looked around and decided to go with the D-Link DIR-825 as my central node and a DAP-1522 to bridge to my TV etc.
They are both N spec dual frequency systems. Arrived today from Amazon for $225 for the pair.
They are both N spec dual frequency systems. Arrived today from Amazon for $225 for the pair.
[Update: they are working fine, I have a 130Mbit/s link speed reported on the 5GHz link between the DIR-825 and the DAP-1522, and I've shut down all the old WiFi networks].
Friday, February 26, 2010
sketching the new garage
While figuring out what we wanted to build, I used Google Sketchup (the free version) to create a 3D model of the house and garage. Working with 3D takes a bit of getting used to, but it's very similar to the solid modeling I was doing to make custom 3D printed parts for my homebrew phone, and Sketchup is very good at getting these kind of artists-impression images created.
The house really is a box, and the full width deck with steps going back down the side doesn't exist yet, but I was able to get the relative position and size of the garage about right so we could see if it fitted in. We then went to TuffShed and got them to draw up plans for our oversized garage. If you get a garage custom "stick built" at the site, the cost is quite high, mostly labor. Tuffshed pre-fabricate the parts, ship them in, and put up the entire building in about three days. The cost (not including foundations) is about $30K for an 1150 square foot triple wide garage (32ft wide, 36ft deep), with a 16ft wide double door, 8ft wide single door, and 10ft high ceilings. The basic cost is more like $20K, but it cost extra to go from 8ft to 10ft ceilings, and we added a bunch of other extra options.
So far, we have had a few minor issues getting the Tuffshed plans approved by the county planning department. Really just clarifications of materials and codes on the drawings, but the first two tries have failed. Everything is now approved apart from the final tweaks to the drawings of the garage, so I'm hoping to get it taken care of next week.
The house really is a box, and the full width deck with steps going back down the side doesn't exist yet, but I was able to get the relative position and size of the garage about right so we could see if it fitted in. We then went to TuffShed and got them to draw up plans for our oversized garage. If you get a garage custom "stick built" at the site, the cost is quite high, mostly labor. Tuffshed pre-fabricate the parts, ship them in, and put up the entire building in about three days. The cost (not including foundations) is about $30K for an 1150 square foot triple wide garage (32ft wide, 36ft deep), with a 16ft wide double door, 8ft wide single door, and 10ft high ceilings. The basic cost is more like $20K, but it cost extra to go from 8ft to 10ft ceilings, and we added a bunch of other extra options.
So far, we have had a few minor issues getting the Tuffshed plans approved by the county planning department. Really just clarifications of materials and codes on the drawings, but the first two tries have failed. Everything is now approved apart from the final tweaks to the drawings of the garage, so I'm hoping to get it taken care of next week.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
the garage saga, it gets complicated
We live out of town, on top of the Santa Cruz mountains. This makes a few things easier, we only have Santa Clara County to deal with, no city rules. We also have more space. The downside is that it can be hard to find people to work on the house, and it can cost more to deliver heavy stuff like gravel than it costs to buy it.
The complications start with a scenic highway. We can't build anything within 100ft of the road, Then there is a well, we can't do things within a 100ft radius of that. Then there is a septic tank and leach field. The leach field is two banks of 250ft long buried perforated pipes which occupies a lot of space, including the space that we want to put a garage on. Then a driveway has to find it's way through and have a turn around area big enough to take a fire engine. All of a sudden, a few acres of land is full.
A few years ago we got a plan drawn up for a modified leach field layout. This removed the upper 250ft field so that we could put the garage there, and added a new 250ft field below. To comply with planning rules we had to show that we could on theory add another 500ft of leach field if the first one failed. So that took up almost all the space.
After all that the biggest possible garage we could fit is a free standing building 32ft wide and 36ft deep. It will have one single and one double door and sit alongside the house about 20ft away and slightly downhill.
To prove that the space existed I got my local ground moving specialist Bob Whalen to use an excavator to dig holes and locate the leach field pipes, and made a big flat area in the right place. Along the way we destroyed the upper leach field before I got permission, we got told off but since the rest of the plan made sense we got away with it and were able to move forward.
At some point the county realized that the plan they had for my driveway bore no relation to what had been put in by the people who built the house, this raised the spectre of a grading violation and possible grading permit, which would be needed if we had to move more than 150 cubic yards to get a driveway that conformed to code.
With a lot of help from Terry and crew at TS Civil Engineering we ended up with a plan for the driveway and leach field that met code, didnt raise a violation and didn't need over 100 cubic yards of grading. With a few tweaks the county finally approved the plan.
The complications start with a scenic highway. We can't build anything within 100ft of the road, Then there is a well, we can't do things within a 100ft radius of that. Then there is a septic tank and leach field. The leach field is two banks of 250ft long buried perforated pipes which occupies a lot of space, including the space that we want to put a garage on. Then a driveway has to find it's way through and have a turn around area big enough to take a fire engine. All of a sudden, a few acres of land is full.
A few years ago we got a plan drawn up for a modified leach field layout. This removed the upper 250ft field so that we could put the garage there, and added a new 250ft field below. To comply with planning rules we had to show that we could on theory add another 500ft of leach field if the first one failed. So that took up almost all the space.
After all that the biggest possible garage we could fit is a free standing building 32ft wide and 36ft deep. It will have one single and one double door and sit alongside the house about 20ft away and slightly downhill.
To prove that the space existed I got my local ground moving specialist Bob Whalen to use an excavator to dig holes and locate the leach field pipes, and made a big flat area in the right place. Along the way we destroyed the upper leach field before I got permission, we got told off but since the rest of the plan made sense we got away with it and were able to move forward.
At some point the county realized that the plan they had for my driveway bore no relation to what had been put in by the people who built the house, this raised the spectre of a grading violation and possible grading permit, which would be needed if we had to move more than 150 cubic yards to get a driveway that conformed to code.
With a lot of help from Terry and crew at TS Civil Engineering we ended up with a plan for the driveway and leach field that met code, didnt raise a violation and didn't need over 100 cubic yards of grading. With a few tweaks the county finally approved the plan.
cars and a place to keep them...
I'm going to blog about cars over the coming months, partly because I'm about to start building a big garage to keep them in and I want to document the process.
We bought a house about 5 years ago that had a wooden shed as it's single garage. We had five cars at the time and there seemed to be enough space to build a big garage. However other priorities intervened and it wasn't until the middle of 2009 we finally got serious.
The first action was to make a large flat space, to see how big it could be, then we got bogged down in the planning process and this week we finally have the key approvals in place!
More details to come....
We bought a house about 5 years ago that had a wooden shed as it's single garage. We had five cars at the time and there seemed to be enough space to build a big garage. However other priorities intervened and it wasn't until the middle of 2009 we finally got serious.
The first action was to make a large flat space, to see how big it could be, then we got bogged down in the planning process and this week we finally have the key approvals in place!
More details to come....
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Netflix Free Trial link
If you were thinking of joining Netflix, click this link to get a two week free trial - it's a new affiliate program that Netflix is starting via the Google Advertiser Network. I will update the free trial link in my iPhone app in the next version.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Bil2010 Millicomputing - The Future In Your Pocket
Here are my slides for BIL tomorrow, predictions for 2010 and 2011:
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Book: Release It! Design and Deploy Production Ready Software by Michael Nygard
Essential reading for anyone architecting web sites. It contains clear explanations and real-life anecdotes of many of the patterns and anti-patterns that I've run into over the years, and I'm learning some new ones. Now I just have to get all the engineers on my team to read it... Here it is on Amazon.
Saturday, January 02, 2010
My iPhone apps 2009
the apps that I use most frequently: Echofon, Skype, Newsstand, Instant Queue Add for Netflix, Amazon, Kindle, Pandora, WootWatch, CoPilot.
In particular I get most of my news via rss feeds using Newsstand, which synchronizes very well with Google Reader on my laptop. I don't own a kindle, but whenever possible I buy books to read on my iPhone using the kindle app.
In particular I get most of my news via rss feeds using Newsstand, which synchronizes very well with Google Reader on my laptop. I don't own a kindle, but whenever possible I buy books to read on my iPhone using the kindle app.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)