This Is How It Starts

This week I'm going to order a survey. I'll have a drawing done for a retaining wall and hire a crew of guy's to build it. When it's ready we need to start back filling soil onto the site. You can get free dirt dropped on a piece of land but it doesn't all arrive at once. Each time a dump truck shows up you need to have a guy with a tractor push it around. That's the real cost, the guy with the tractor. Fortunately Bob Aiken's lives three doors down. Bob's one of them guy's that never retires. He runs the tiny water company that feeds the houses on our part of Taylor Road. Three separate wells are connected together and provide pretty good water pressure. When I called on him to talk about hooking up our water I found a well maintained tractor in his yard. He works on an hourly basis that's very fair and he knows the local guy's with dump trucks. It can't get more automatic. The average dump truck holds about twelve cubic yards of dirt. On the back of a napkin I figured we will need 180 yards of dirt just under the building envelope, let alone bringing the entire property up to grade. This all takes time. I figure that if I start calling for dirt within two weeks that it will take the entire summer to get enough on site to do the job. If you try and rush this it will consume vast quantities of money. Patience is called for here, not something I have much of to begin with, but let's consider the alternative.

www.bbtandex.com

Check out this guy's website. He's a local Portland builder with with the right equipment and experience to do the job. Try to imagine how much he has to pay out every month to keep his doors open. I can assure you that he's not getting rich doing this kind of work. I don't begrudge him a penny of what he charges to do what he does. It's hard work even with the equipment. So you can imagine how lucky I feel that Mr. Aiken's lives three doors down.