Rocky Corner Cohousing

Love where you live

Swimming pool? You wish.

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The pit being dug here is about eight feet deep in the video, with about three feet further to go. Once it is leveled out and the bottom is filled with a level layer of structural fill, the hole will house a 31,000 gallon concrete water tank. The water will be available to the Bethany Fire Department in case there is ever a fire at Rocky Corner.

A fire engine will pump water out of this tank and into a series of dry hydrants arrayed on a water main down the center of the community. This water supply is not connected to the water we’ll use every day. Sprinklers in the homes are connected to the domestic water supply.

 

Three engineers walked into a . . .

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. . . construction site.

Three vehicles lined up on construction driveway. Frontier Communications, Eversource (our electric utility), and Xfinity by Comcast
A moment worth commemorating: Frontier, Eversource, and Comcast at the same place at the same time. When have you ever seen that before?

No such thing as too much topsoil

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Our site contractor has stripped a great deal more topsoil from the construction area than will be needed to regrade the site after the homes are built? What should he do with it? We decided to use it to increase the depth of topsoil in the primary vegetable growing area between the main driveway and Meyers Road.

Windrows of rich soil consisting of many dumptruck loads, waiting to be spread.
A considerable amount of topsoil had been moved by this morning, with more to come. It will help level the field and increase the overall depth of the topsoil layer.

 

A bonus is that spreading it now will smother all that mugwort and will allow us to get a cover crop in soon.

The soil is a rich sandy loam with excellent tilth. We did not go to the added expense of screening it. This is New England; what would we do without rocks in the soil?

Hand holding clump of good garden loam.
The loamy topsoil being spread on the vegetable field.

 

 

 

Construction office delivered

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One-story wooden shed structure to right of driveway.
Looking west toward the main entry on Old Amity Road. The construction office has been delivered and set up on the structural fill layer of the drive.

Rather than renting a trailer for several thousand dollars and having nothing to show for it after construction is complete, we authorized the purchase of this portable building.The construction manager will outfit it with power, insulation, and heat. After completion of the project, they’ll deliver it to the farm core, where it will serve as a utility building. One end is a garage door, so we’ll be able to store a tractor or truck in it.

The dark hump in the driveway that looks like a sleeping dog is actually the top of a knob of bedrock. For the time being, workers are driving around it. Within the next few days, it will be broken up and removed. We’re waiting for the four-ton hydraulic hammer to come to the site. (Four tons is the force rating, not how much the hammer weighs.)

 

Groundbreaking: A chorus line

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Eleven people standing in a row in front of project funding signs, pretending to shovel dirt, pretty much like every other groundbreaking photo.
The money shot at yesterday’s groundbreaking ceremony.

From left: Melissa Kops (original project architect), Connecticut housing commissioner Evonne Klein, Bethany first selectperson Derrylyn Gorski; Carla Weil, Capital for Change; Marie Pulito, Rocky Corner; Rob Crowner, Equity Trust; David Berto, Housing Enterprises, Inc.; E.J. D’Ettore, Ion Bank; Dan Batt, Centerbrook Architects; Brenda Caldwell, Rocky Corner; Dick Margulis, Rocky Corner.

State Senator Logan pays us a visit

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Connecticut Senator George Logan visits Rocky Corner site,May 21, 2018. Back row, from left: Senator Logan, Charlotte Hitchcock, Marie Pulito, Brenda Caldwell, Rich Wilber. Front row, Ben, Robbie.

New rendering of site layout

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Sketch of community layout. Actual homes will have optional porches, dormers, skylights, and end windows selected by the original home buyers. Those shown are for illustration only. Buildings and improvements shown NEED NOT BE BUILT.

Architect’s rendering of Rocky Corner community layout. Computer-generated perspective view by Centerbrook Architects and Planners. Colored pencil by Charlotte Hitchcock. Colors identify the clusters to help you visualize the layout. Actual homes will not be the same color within a cluster.

Actual homes will have optional porches, dormers, skylights, and end windows selected by the original home buyers. Those shown are for illustration only. Buildings and improvements shown NEED NOT BE BUILT (our lawyer told us we have to say that).

 

 

You don’t need a weatherman to tell you that the wind blew in Bethany yesterday

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Power  is out in Bethany today, with crews up and down the roads clearing fallen limbs and trees and repairing fallen power lines. As we don’t have electricity on the construction site yet, this didn’t slow down the work.

A few trees came down north of the area we wanted to clear. Those trees had been sheltered over the years by the section of woods that we had to remove. Without that barrier, they succumbed to severe winds yesterday. Otherwise, there was no damage from the storm.

The land clearing contractor’s collection of big toys. Most of them, anyway.
Looking west along the main drive toward Old Amity Road. The base layer has been rolled to form a compacted base. The darker material in the foreground is the first layer of gravel.
Gravel will be spread over the compacted sub-base to the depth of the lower orange tie. Then the finish layer will be spread to the level of the upper orange tie. We’ll have an asphalt top layer for the 100 feet of driveway nearest the public road. Otherwise, our roads are pervious surfaces.
Subsoil previously removed from one part of the site now being used to build the roadbed for the main drive. We’re lucky to have good sandy, gravelly subsoil that can be used this way instead of having to buy truckloads of soil from elsewhere. The contractors refer to this material as gravel, and it has quite a bit of stone in it, even though it looks like it’s mostly sand.

Picking up the pace

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Clearing weed trees to make room for the northernmost clusters of homes. These small hardwood trees will be sorted. A furniture maker friend may select some to be milled. Others will be cut up for firewood to be used in our masonry stoves. Some might find their way into hugelkultur beds or into the visual berms we’re building for neighbors. If we have more than we can use, we may sell some to a firewood processor.
The tops and limbs of the removed trees are being chipped. That huge pile will be used as a base for the public walking and horse trail along the northern edge of the property.
The brush has been cleared from the area where the southern home clusters will be built.
All the stripped topsoil has now been moved from point A to point B. It’s out of the way of construction and will be spread again at the end. We’re working with our permaculture consultants on deciding the best places to distribute the surplus topsoil. This is an old dairy farm, and the topsoil is high in organic matter. So it’s a valuable resource that we want to use wisely.

A productive hour in the woods

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The machine was out of camera range by the time I thought to take a picture, but it rolls up to a tree, grasps the trunk, slices it off near the ground with what amounts to a giant hydraulic scissors, and then lays the tree down on a stack. Later, the trees will be limbed. The limbs will go to the chipper, and the chips will be used as a layer on the public hiking and horse trail along the northern edge of the property. The trimmed trunks will be used for firewood. Know anyone who wants to buy a few hundred cords of firewood?

Beginning to clear some of the wooded area where the perimeter drive runs north of the common house.

Size matters

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A closeup of that power shovel seen earlier in long shots. The scoop is about one Brenda tall (not quite a Smoot, but big enough to move a lot of dirt fast).
One very large dump truck engaged in moving a large pile of soil from point A to point B.

Potatoes

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That’s what the site contractor calls glacial erratics.

Pile of boulders with mound of soil behind it, bulldozer in background
Stripping soil from where our ring road will be has unearthed a lot of boulders. This is one of four piles, and it’s not the largest. They’ll be put to good use, providing structure for a visual berm designed to keep our headlights from disturbing neighbors.

Moving right along

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The site contractor will soon be setting up silt fencing to control erosion during construction. They’re also fencing off sensitive areas to prevent excessive soil compaction as they move their heavy equipment around.

Work continues on brush clearing and on preparing roadbeds by stripping off topsoil and removing boulders. Don’t worry. The topsoil will be put to good use.

Temporary fencing around one of the large white oaks to keep heavy construction equipment from rolling over the root zone
Erosion control supplies delivered

Beginning work on the main driveway

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To keep construction equipment of scenic Meyers Road, the first order of business is to establish the main driveway in from Old Amity Road, so that can serve as the main construction entrance.

Cutting the main driveway in from Old Amity Road.
Power shovel dumping dirt on a pile.
Removing topsoil from the main driveway, near Old Amity Road. Those boulders in the foreground will find their use in landscaping later.
Looking down the length of the main driveway toward Old Amity Road, with the excavator just visible at the far end.

Construction has begun

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Second weekly construction meeting, May 3, 2018. Representatives of the construction manager, site contractor, site engineer, Town of Bethany, and Rocky Corner, at the temporary construction trailer. That’s Robbie chilling in the grass.

Ready to roll

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Green Haven, Inc. issued a “notice to proceed” letter to our construction manager today. The wheels are in motion!