Forked Meadow – Page 32 – Not Your Average Engineer

May 19, 2014May 25, 2014

Improving a Spring in a Meadow for Domestic Water Use

This area below one of the meadows has a year-round spring that flows a little above one gallon per minute. We decided to use the water flow for a domestic water supply for my parents’ trailer when they park it nearby on the property in the summers.

We started by digging out an area of the streambed down to bare mineral soil and rock.

There is a lot of fool’s gold in this stream.

Looking down at the construction. We are going to put in some cedar boards in order to impound water.

A layer of big rocks and smaller rocks.

Next we will put layers of gravel and sand above the larger rocks. Organic matter will go on the top. Over time, the flow of water will be strong through the springbox.

May 18, 2014May 25, 2014

Building the Barn

We built a small temporary barn on my parents’ new property in the mountains of California. The video is of my dad cutting down a cedar tree prior to us starting construction.

Working on the floating piling foundations.

The outer frame in place.

Stubbing up the first posts.

Putting in the studs for the floor.

All the studs are in.

More of the beams up.

All the posts up.

Putting down the floor.

Most of the floor down.

We found this little guy on the construction site.

The floor all in.

Front door beams and posts in place. Side 2×6 boards up.

Working on the shimming the rear beam.

Back beam up.

Securing the top beam. It was extremely heavy.

All three big roof beams up and in place.

Big beams cut out of douglas fir trees in Oregon. My dad recently purchased an Alaskan lumber mill that uses a chainsaw to cut out big pieces of wood.