Laying the foundations

This is the team. Hillary from Denim Homes, project manager and details whizz. She's keeping all the numbers together, sending us regular updates about what's happening on the job, putting us in touch with the right local people we need to contact, and chasing things up so everything happens in the right order at the right time. Hillary is also an energy efficiency specialist, so she's helped us make many decisions about materials and design to ensure we have the most energy efficient house we can afford.

Next to her, in the plaid shirt is Caleb. He's the chief of Denim Homes. Caleb has had a ready and intelligent answer to every single question we've asked (and we've asked heaps) during this process. He obviously knows what he's doing -- and everyone in town we talked to had good things to say about him and his company.

In the red cap is dc. Client.

And in front of dc, in the red shirt is Kari, the owner of Down to Earth landscaping. Kari is in charge of everything outside the house. She really shares our vision for a natural landscape, home to birds, bees, native plants, humans and a dog.

I took this picture before the bulldozer arrived. We were discussing the orientation of the house. Would it face South or "solar South" which was several degrees more South than regular South. North and South aren't as fixed as you'd think. This needs to be a South-facing house to catch the sun. (In New Zealand, you want a North-facing house, being in the Southern hemisphere.)  But solar South orientation -- the one that would get us the absolute maximum sun available -- put the house on too harsh an angle, and messed with the views from the living room. So we opted for regular South. Still plenty of sun, but views down the whole acre from the living areas, and a better feeling of privacy.

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When we left Wolfville at the end of August, the front of the land had been cleared of scrub and weeds, and the beautiful red soil was piled up into huge mounds around the perimeter of the site. One piece of advice our landscaper, Kari, gave us was "Don't let anything leave the site while the building is happening. We will use it all for the landscaping." Good point. Nothing is leaving the site.

Over September and October, the foundation has been put in. Compared to what we do in New Zealand it's pretty extreme. They dig a trench 4 ft deep -- that's 1.2 metres. This is to get the floor insulation under the frost line. It's staggering to me, but the ground freezes a meter deep there. Yikes!

I think this is the greenhouse, attached to the back of the house.

Then they build a concrete frost wall:

The front door

Then they load up with insulation:

Garage, front door and guest room

And lay all manner of plumbing stuff:

Looking from the master bedroom, across the sitting room into the utilidor (utility corridor)

Put all that soil back in and Bob's your foundation:

View from the street

All that happened over the past couple of months. We watched from afar. This can be a bit of a dangerous thing. We were convinced the orientation of the slab was wrong -- not solar South, or even regular South, but even less South. I was wondering why there seemed to be a toilet in the hallway. A little long-distance knowledge can be a dangerous thing!