Thursday, June 28

Hydraulics

Rule number one about hydraulics: Plumbing is the bane of civilization, humanity’s greatest folly. Being closely related to plumbing, hydraulic systems are doomed to failure. Often. Constantly. Eternally. The rule of frequency of failure:
  • Easily-accessible hydraulics fail the least.
  • Difficult-to-access hydraulics fail the most.
Randy crawls under the boom, freeing a bound-up hose
That was today’s problem. The lift we depend on decided that its longest hydraulic hose was due for failure, which it did. Not only longest, but most difficult-to-reach since it’s inside the 30-foot-long extensible boom. Randy was up to the task, having replaced that line several times. But this failure had a novel feature since the hose was trapped between a thick steel cable and a pulley and had to be cut loose with a power saw.

My job today was traveling back and forth getting the needed tools from our shop a mile away on our bad road. But we prevailed and the lift now works. Meanwhile, the building crew were busy putting on the additional bracing needed before the roof goes on. And plumbing up the walls. It’s so nice to have plumb walls. For the workers, it could be called a plumb job. Ha ha.

The capper on the day was the good news that Karla would be home from Florence Lake tonight. I can’t wait to take her down to the new house early tomorrow morning and watch her face light up as she sees the potential of living in this wonderful space. I was so pleased today as I saw the actual sizes and shapes of all the rooms we worked so long to plan. The reality is so much more exciting than our guesswork as we laid everything out on paper. The window sizes are so much different from what I imagined. They’re huge! We can see forever, and the vistas are so much greater since the house is so high off the ground. The dining room is big enough for a thousand people. We can easily accommodate a party of two thousand in the great room. Even the bathrooms can allow several people to use the facilities simultaneously if they like each other.

Well, almost.
It helps if your DNA retains ancient monkey-ness

The different ceiling heights starts to show in the outside wall profile

Again, the monkey genes come in handy
It will be hard to be unhappy in this wonderful house!

2 comments:

Susan Hurley-Luke said...

I know that excitement :) Enjoy! The house is looking fabulous! (And no monkey business from YOU, Mr.)

Daffy said...

Just catching up on about 4 blogs; one can't keep pace with the work; and tree-mendous views....