SLAB

Nice cool morning so headed out to prep the site for the slab that will be the floor of the battery house by my wind turbines. Fairly easy to level the spot. Foundation will be 4' x 5' and 3 1/2" thick. Cut and screwed together the frame and cut the re-mesh mat to reinforce the slab. Added about 1" of sand to the base to further level the spot building it up about 6" from the forms. This way the outer edge of the slab will be a bit thicker to handle the load of the rolled earth walls I will build. I learned this technique from my neighbor Don Hills back in upstate NY. He built the foundation for his garage workshop this way to avoid having to trench out and pour underground foundation walls which is fine for a non living space in the cold NE where you have to accommodate a 4' frost line underground. Of course here there are no building codes nor do I have to worry about underground frost ( and I won't be living in the battery house anyway ).

By 1PM it was already 110 degrees so I decided to drive down to Study Butte to pick up a 5 gallon bottle of water. I have yet to add a filter system to my rainwater catchment tank so I splurge on bottled water twice a month for drinking. I get my drinking water from a place called H2O to Go. The woman who runs the joint is a real sweetheart and I enjoy going down there just to shoot the breeze with her. She is sort of a surrogate mom to alot of folks out here.

Our forecast through the weekend doesn't look good. Good chance of showers every day. Light rain started here at about 4PM. Spent 2 hours under the mist filling a big rut in my driveway. Nice to work in such cool conditions - I sweated like a pig this morning digging for the foundation. Heavy thunderstorms east and west of me. If the rain stays light here and stops overnight, I will be able to get my materials delivery tomorrow. In the event that my road gets too swampy - the building supply delivery will have to get dropped at my neighbors house 5 miles away from me.