SLOFab Progress

Oh the city...

Blake Anton April 2013

One would think that living in a city that markets themselves as progressive and sustainable, that maybe, just maybe, the city would encourage an incredibly progressive and sustainable idea to be built within the city limits. Or maybe they would try to be a little helpful to a couple of college students trying to learn about the whole permitting process, especially if they need the project to get off the ground to graduate. Sadly, this is not the case. We have been given the run around more than once - our first plan check, which was quoted at 4 weeks, was returned in 6 weeks - and our re-submittal, quoted at a 2 week turnaround has been in their hands for over 4 weeks now, as I type this in frustration... Sigh, not a whole lot we can do. Do we chew out the guy who is in charge of our plan review, only to have him hold them for longer to spite us? Thank you for the additional month of waiting you have put us through already for a 450 sq ft project... ​

Tree Removal

​Blake Anton April 2013

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There was a very large cyprus tree on the south side of the EcoFab lot that we tried to work around. We played with rotating the house and modifying the south side to work with a north-south orientation and tried shifting the house around in the lot to no avail. The large cyprus blocked the sun when we needed it - in the winter, and didn't block the sun when we didn't want it - in the summer. I went in front of the SLO country tree board and presented my arguement complete with solar shading diagrams and a brief explanation of our project. It was accepted, and was removed by the Los Osos Tree Service who did a fine job.

Breaking Ground
Blake Anton May 2013

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We have finally broken ground. Trenches for the electrical, water, sewer, internet, and phone lines have been dug. We started off with a ditch witch which went decently, however we hit compacted sandstone the closer we got to the EcoFab planned location. We did what we could by hand with picks and shovels in addition to the ditch witch, but saved the rest for the Kuobota excavator. We rented a small excavator for digging the footings, slab, the rest of the trenching, and for grading the site. Total run time was just under 11 hours and the amount of dirt moved was impressive! The sandstone in the north east corner of the site was very difficult - so hard that the excavator couldn't break through it and Tyler had to take care of it by hand with a big pick axe!