Solterra will sit on 2 square acres out in the country on a one road development. The plot plan above shows the
key areas on the lot with the house set back considerably from the
road, the existing Steelmaster 21 x 42 building at upper left (set at
an angle to be different), which is 1/3 dog kennel for our 3
Rottweilers, and 2/3 art studio for Leah. At upper right, the tower can
also be seen with the Bergey 1.5 KW upwind turbine. There will be a
large fenced-in area around the turbine's guy wires so the dogs can run
and play. The septic system is in front and the smaller irregular areas
will be planting beds which will be landscaped (along with the earth
berms) with trees, plants, and bushes by Howard Landscaping.
(click on images below to enlarge)
Because so much of the existing footprint of the house is going to be covered, we stripped the topsoil in that area and stockpiled
it for topsoil to be later placed on the roof for groundcover. We
needed about 1600 cubic yards of additional backfill to create the
berms and for general landscaping, so we were fortunate to obtain that
amount by having 150 quadaxle truckloads of good backfill dumped in
neat rows around half our property, as shown in the images below.
(click images to enlarge)
In preparation for digging the footers, stakes had to be laid out for all the walls, and flags had to pinpoint the centerlines of all the geothermal lines and solar thermal heat dump lines. Then we
installed a catch basin in one of the 4" field tile runs so that not
only could water be pumped out and drained during construction, but the
basin could also catch water from the internal sump crock in the
finished home and all water from the roof drainage system. We were then
ready for construction.
