Progress...

We've been back in OK since the end of September, life has kept us busy but we're making progress we should document.

The task at hand is excavation (or dirt work as they call it here), and site preparation.  Our land while beautiful, sits low relative to the water table and requires some thoughtful planning to insure a successful project.

We need to put in an access road/driveway, clear the area for our house pad, and we're planning a pond.  We have settled on a company to handle this work for us and they have flagged the route through our property, outlined the house pad (80x70), outlined the pond, and outlined parking for Edward.  The access road will be about 16 foot wide, slightly wider at the street and will curve as you drive onto the property to maintain privacy for the house pad site.  The house pad is situated to allow the house to face South per the design.

While we've been working on the site preparation plans, our site planner has been making progress on our formal site plan for the city.  We hope to have that completed this month so we can submit it for approval and get over that hurdle, time will tell.

We'll try to post more frequently moving forward, or at least when anything major happens.

 

Welcome to Hazard County ;)

We need an access, and enough of a clearing for the house pad, well and septic installation, and the lateral lines for the septic system. $37,000 to clear and excavate our build site? We didn't move to Hazard, but we can see it from here, lol... In all seriousness, I'm sure its just par for the course when you're new in town and finding your way.

From Las Vegas, we started researching companies that do site prep work in the local area and came across company that quoted us $37k for what amounted to basic clearing and excavation. Given that the going rate for the equipment and personnel they were proposing is $85/hr, that’s a little over 10 weeks at 40 working hours per week. This to clear a short 16-18 foot wide path back to the pad site, and clear out approximately 1-1.5 acres of trees and brush.

Maybe we're missing something, or just don't understand exactly what their proposing, but everyone we have talked to since has said that that company saw us coming... from Las Vegas that is. To their credit, they did say they were "trying to get us some better pricing", but we still don't know how they arrived at $37k.

We have since met with 3 other reputable excavation and site preparation companies and we're making the rounds through their references. It looks like we've found our guys though, and if all their refs check out, we should be able to get things moving as soon as the rains stop and the ground dries out a bit.

We're flying back to Las Vegas for a couple of days this coming week, then off to Southern California for a couple of weeks of on-site work with clients. Hopefully the conditions will be right to get started upon our return.

We'll update on the process and progress as we go, stay tuned.