Using stucco to refinish the exterior of your house: part 2 preparing the exterior

In the previous blog I described the stucco job that was done on the garage for the house and mentioned the reason I am going to stucco the whole house.  To stucco the house with a finish coat over paint it is necessary to prepare the surface well so that the stucco lasts a long time and doesn't fall off.

To prepare the house it is necessary to get rid of the loose paint / dirt / mold / etc. and etch the surface.  To do this I bought a Dewalt pressure washer at Home Depot.  It is 3400 psi. and it is phenomenal!  The Honda engine  usually starts on the first pull.  A good video from a very experienced stucco installer can be found at  this link.
 

 

When using it I have found that my house has three coats of paint.  Considering that it is built in 1962 and it is 55 years old that seems a little sparse.   The last paint job was done by me and I did a shitty job.  I never prepared the surface and the white paint has been peeling ever since.  The pressure washer takes off that paint layer off easily.  The second white layer of paint is stuck on pretty good but in some places it came off and exposed the original tan paint layer.   Whatever they did for the third tan layer is amazing because it has only come off to expose  the concrete in rare instances.

Here is a picture of the east side after pressure washing only once where the top paint layer has been completely removed.

 

The pressure washer takes off all the moth / worm cocoons too.  They are pretty stubborn and sometimes the nozzle of the pressure washer has to be pointed directly at it up close in order for it to come off.  Below is a picture of the worm / moth cocoons which make the house look hairy.

Since I have a two story house,  I decided to buy a scaffold.  I bought the scaffold at Northern Tool.  The two story version was not in the store but was on sale for $100 off so if I wanted it I had to order it online and wait 4 weeks to get it.  Not good!  However they had all the pieces in the store sold separately so I bought them all to make the complete two story scaffold.  The salesman asked his boss if I could get the $100 discount and the manager said yes.  This made me a happy camper.  The scaffold is shown below.

 

Since I really wanted to get the stucco done where the paver driveway would be installed so there would be no chance of ruining the pavers, I pressure washed the front twice and most of the sides of the house but left the back for later.  This way I could speed up the stucco process where it is needed most.

Next I thought about repairing the large cracks in the stucco but not all of them.  Stucco cracks and so I decided not to fuss too much.  For reference I found this video and this video on crack repair.  Also this is interesting link on the effects of repairing a maintenance free stucco finish crack.

My approach is to use elastopatch found at this link.  They also make a textured variety found at this link but I did not use that.  Since I am stuccoing over the patched crack I dont have to worry about the different coloring due to rain.   Is this the right way to go?  I don't know maybe Kirk knows.

Here is picture of  a crack that I spent some time etching with the pressure washer on the side of the house.

I'm not sure I'm going to repair any cracks before I start stuccoing the front of the house.  There are really no large cracks that I'll be stuccoing over right away.  Whenever, I get around to repairing a crack I will blog about it.

Finally, I worked on covering the windows with black 6 mil plastic.   To hold the plastic on I use poly tape.  This tape is not supposed to leave a residue unless you leave it on for a whole month.  Also I made sure to use a brand new blade in my knife. The video for how to do this is here

 
  


That's all for now.  Next blog


Happy building,

The Dr.

Using stucco to refinish the exterior of your house: part 1 thoughts about colored stucco

In my previous blog I had mentioned that I had purchased paver's for my driveway but unfortunately it will take 6 to 10 weeks to get them.  So that means lots of down time.  To fill the down time I have decided to do the next necessary thing for my house.  To refinish the exterior.

The exterior which is sponge finished painted stucco has a lot of blemishes.   It has paint that is pealing.  It has depressions where the old shutters used to be.  It has humps where the cracks were repaired.  It has cracks some of which are in the classic stair step pattern  One crack I discovered goes vertically from the ground all the way to the top of the two story house.  Finally there are little moth cocoons all over the house and it almost looks like the house has hair.

Anyway, I looked into different ways of texturing my house.  One time a long time ago a salesman came to my house and gave me an estimate for what might have been tex cote. Not sure what it was, I don't remember.   But the advantage of the system he was offering was that it never had to be painted, was maintenance free and it didn't crack.  It might have to be cleaned by pressure washing it once in awhile.  I think sears can do a similar installation.

Anyway,  his quote was $25000 to do the whole house which is about 2500 sq ft..  When he left I shook his hand and watched him drive off in his $80000 Tesla.   I guess I'm in the wrong business!  Anyway, when you get an estimate and the guy comes driving up in a expensive car and talks about his yacht or vacations to Tahiti its a red flag.  That means your probably going to pay top dollar and be funding his life of luxury.

I haven't really found anything for texturing my house besides stucco.  There just doesn't seem to be a lot of options and I'm tired of searching the internet.  So stucco it is.

When I got my garage stuccoed by professionals I got a number of estimates.  There was a lot of push back from the contractors because I wanted to do what my dad suggested....get colored (white) stucco on my house.  They just want it to be brown stucco and then I would have to paint it.   But dad said that they used to put on color stucco and not paint the houses.  Yet I kept hearing from the contractors that this is not what is done today.   So I ended up finding someone who would do the colored stucco and he hesitantly he did it.  He asked if I was sure that I wanted to do it and he kept indicating that I would have to put on a sealer on it anyway to keep the water out especially in the areas where stucco was going on wood so I might as well just paint it.  And brown stucco is cheaper he pointed out. 

I don't know if any of this push back is legitimate or if it is a ploy to get painters in on the job.  Maybe it is legitimate.  But I didn't listen and after about a year with having done nothing to my colored stucco job, I am going to proceed on with the idea for the whole house and I'm going to do it myself.   I will not paint it.

Since I have not blogged about the stucco job the professionals  did on the garage I will touch briefly on what they did.

I started out with cinder block.  The first step was to put tar paper over the wood areas to serve as a moisture barrier.  The wood parts include the gable end, the porch roof, the header and column.  To do this quickly I used a hammer stapler found at this link to attach the tar paper.  This is what the stucco guy wanted me to do to get the house ready for the stucco.

 

After this was done the Stucco guy went at it and put wire lath on with a nail gun.

 

 

The next step the stucco guy put on a scratch coat which is a base coat.

 

  

Then another base coat is added.

 

And then the white stucco finish coat was put on.  Interestingly enough, when the white stucco went on over the brown stucco the brown stucco showed through.  You can see this in the pic below.

 

But it whitened up over time as the stucco guy said it would.  It still has a slight brown tint or off white color though which is nice.

 

I like the result of the finish on the garage and intend to extend it myself to the rest of the house.  The cost of the job was $2620 for just the garage portion and porch.  An estimate fot the rest of the house was in the $10000 range.

Anyway, a good reference for stucco questions is the Portland cement association website.  The FAQs are at this link   They talk about painting stucco under the Aesthetics section, and have written the following:

"Stucco can be painted. Portland cement-based paints are very compatible with stucco because they are made of the same material. These paints should be scrubbed into the surface and fully cured. Alternatively, you could consider a colored stucco finish. These finish coats are often made with white cement and pigments, providing the widest range of colors. Premixed materials are color matched from batch to batch and are most consistent.

Additionally, the fact that you are placing a finish coat with a nominal thickness of 1/8 inch instead of a paint layer usually gives more assurance of complete coverage. It is possible to paint with other types of paint, though these are usually not as long lasting as cement-based paint. Acrylic paints are long lasting and durable but change the permeability of the stucco (make it non-breathable) which in some climates may have adverse effects on the long-term performance of the system." 

The adverse effects mentioned above might have to do with what is mentioned  in this link.  It says that the paint is not breathable and water on the ground will seep up into the stucco wall where it will be trapped behind the paint and cause mold.   

Having just uncovered the above info when writing this blog I am glad I did not do anything to my freshly stuccoed garage.

In the next blog I will discuss the preparation of the house exterior for stucco.

Happy Building.

The Dr.

How to install your own paver driveway: part 4 ordering the pavers

In the last blog I discussed paver selection.  As was mentioned there are a lot of factors to consider when selecting pavers like roof color, house color, paver color, paver size, paver pattern and surrounding landscaping color.  all these factors can bog down the decision making process or if they are not considered the end result may be sub par.  One thing in my favor is that I am the only one making the decision and therefore it is less complicated.

So initially I was set on a white / tan paver, but after considering what color my house would be I realized there would be too much similar light colors and I needed some contrasting colors.  I have decided that my house color will be a shade of white with teal paint on the doors, window frames and maybe the gable ends.  Its kind of what the house color scheme has been for a long time but it will be slightly different coloring.

For pavers, I decided on the Abacoa color pattern  which is a red, charcoal, tan mix.  To settle on this color I made a second trip to Coastal an old castle company in Orlando (link). and looked at their in ground paver display.  This time instead of looking for light white tan pavers I looked for darker pavers and found the pavers pictured below

In the picture brick pavers are used but I'm purchasing a larger paver known as Appian Stone.  I tried going even larger by purchasing Appian Grande link but it was not available and I think it has become a legacy paver.    In the very bottom of the picture is different colored Appian stone.  The Appian stone is a two paver system with pavers of dimensions 6" x 6" and 6" x 9".  The reason I wanted the Grande is because I thought that I might want to roll a jack on the driveway and this would offer less resistance.  Also tiles in housing have trended to bigger sizes and I wonder if the same trend will happen with pavers but maybe not.  Anyway Appian Stone it is.  Here is link where someone used Abocoa Appian Stone for a pool deck.

Additionally, I like the charcoal colored paver border in the picture and I am going to attempt that as well.

I calculated that I need 804 Sq Ft of pavers and about 135 feet of border.  It is recommended that when ordering, an extra  10% to 15% is added on to account for the pavers that are cut.  That comes out to be 9 pallets of Appian Stone and 1 Pallet of the black brick where a pallet is 103 square feet.  I'm not to worried about running out since the small pad for the garbage cans can be adjusted in size depending on what I have left over.


To get the best price, I called a local installer that sells the pavers and Old castle in Orlando.  The local installer had paver left overs for sale but was not a dealer of pavers so no dice.  Old Castle of Orlando would sell everything to me for $2696.

However, I had another trick up my sleeve.  I learned this when shopping for cedar for my cedar covered porch project discussed in this link.  I called Lowe's.  Now Lowe's does not have these pavers in their store or online but they do have a different offering of Belgard pavers.  To get stuff from Lowe's that is not their standard offering you have to call their pro desk.

My first call to the pro desk resulted in no one answering.  My second resulted in the statement "we don't have Belgard as a supplier."  But after about an hour I thought to myself, wait a minute they have Belgard pavers in the store.  I got out my red bullshit flag and threw it on the ground.  In my third call, I challenged their statement and then educated the staff about the pavers in their store.  They then wanted to transfer me to the lawn and garden store to talk with them.  I said no I'm not talking with them they wont be able to help me and then I told them my story on how I got some really nice cedar through the pro desk and I would like them to find out if it is possible to get the paver's from the Lowes as well.

Turns out they could get them, from old castle for a slight higher cost per square foot but a much lower delivery cost.  But when I asked for the QSP discount the price cam out to be $2345.  Adding on the 1% for the cash rewards credit card I used resulted in $375 savings or more than one pallet for free.   Nice!

Unfortunately, I have to wait 6 to 10 weeks for Belgard to make the pavers.  This might have something to do with the non standard color causing them not to be in stock.

Since I now have down time other house projects are now in focus.  I will discuss what mammoth project I have just started in my next blog.  For the continuation of the paver driveway blog see this link

Happy Building,

The Dr.

How to install your own paver driveway: part 3 paver selection

For the last blog I discussed the sub-base.  For this blog I will discuss paver selection.   For this discussion this link is very informative.

In  my area there is Landscape Depot, they sell flagstone pavers (link) and they have an in ground display.  The flagstone paver website is very nice and there are a lot of pictures to look at and get ideas. Unfortunately, the paver I picked was not in Landscape Depot's in ground display and when I wanted some samples to put next to my house they told me the minimum order was a 1.5 ton pallet which is about $300 for 110 square feet of pavers.  Ordering $2000 of pavers (8 pallets) based on catalog / internet pictures is risky because they will for sure look different when they arrive at your house.  So no dice once again with Landscape Depot.

Anyway when I had talked with the dump truck driver he had mentioned a company named Coastal an old castle company in Orlando (link).  They are a dealer for Belgard pavers.  I looked into them and found out that they too have an in ground display.  I made the hour drive and their display was better than Landscape Depot's dispaly because they had numbers on the pavers that could be looked up on a guide to tell people what the pavers were.   Also the pavers and the colors  I was interested in were on display.  They had about 60 paver installations on display some of which are shown below.

 

I was also able to get a few samples of the colors I was interested in (but not the size) free of charge.  So I ended up with two aragon, two harvest blend and two chestnut pavers.  They had quite a big yard with alot of pavers in stock as can be seen in the pics below.

I took these pavers home and realized there was an issue.  First the colors I picked would be slightly different for each paver block.  This is on purpose and adds variation to the pavers in the driveway and it makes the driveway look nicer.  But my small sample was not big enough to see this variation and how it would look.  I took pictures of the displays I had seen so I looked at those and then encountered my second problem.  I was using a $20 phone with a terrible camera.   The colors were in no way what I saw with my eyes.  A display that looked magnificent with my eyes looked like an ordinary sidewalk in the pictures.  That was the last straw with the phone I had and I bought a better phone that has a better camera that very day.  I was not particularly impressed with the paver colors I had selected and was wishing I had picked up an amaretto color as well.

I decided to investigate Lowes and they actually had pavers that were not on their website.  They had Belgard Trinity Pavers (amaretto), Country Manor pavers (sand /tan) and Providence pavers (harvest blend).  The trinity pavers had three different sizes and a beveled edge.  The other pavers had a textured surface that mimics slate.  I bought 6 samples of all three varieties and tried them up against the house.

Shown below is the country manor pavers.

 

Then the Trinity (on the left) looks like a non tumbled paver and Providence pavers (on the right) are shown below

 

The price for these pavers from Lowe's is expensive.  For the Trinity pavers they come in at  $3.42 a square foot.  Where as the the Coastal pricing is about $2.25 per square foot and $228 for delivery so when all said and done about $2.50 a square foot.  However, a call to the Lowes pro desk may change the price on the trinity when I tell them I need 8 pallets.

One thing I noticed when fiddling with the pavers is the pattern has a big influence on how the pavers look.  Concentrating on the trinity pavers here are a few patterns to look at that may not be fully complete patterns due to the limited number of samples.   Below is a T pattern or half an I pattern.

 

 Next we have a running board pattern.

This pattern reminds me of the Ashler pattern

Out of all these pavers I have sampled there are a few things that I like.  I like the beveled edge on the Trinity pavers and I also like the larger size.  The beveled edges provide and accent and when I look at paver driveways with pavers that have flush edges it is not as pleasing to the eye,  The biggest paver in the trinity series is 9.8" by "14.7".  To me the larger size looks better and I dislike driveways with too much detail.  Also, although I have the garage to work on my car in, the larger pavers will offer less resistance to rolling my jack around and the beveled edge will be less prone to chipping.

Anyway, after fiddling around with paver colors I realized that maybe I should select a house color scheme.   I would hate to put pavers in and find out that later on the house paint color I want does not match the pavers I installed.   To help with this I went driving around some of the neighborhoods and found the houses with grey/silver roofs with paver driveways.   Here are a few pics of some very nice color schemes.

The picture shows a greenish/blueish house with tan/white/charcoal pavers

Then we have the light yellow house with tan/white/charcol pavers

 

Then there is the grey house with the more grayish pavers

 

And the white house with grayish pavers

 

Then there is the brownish/green green house

 

The greenish/blueish house is a little dark but I think that is my favorite especially since the paver driveway looks exceptionally nice.

Anyway, another way of going about it is to use a picture of the house and then import it into the Belgard paver driveway visualizer at this link   They allow you to put in various pavers, paver colors and patterns.  Since I hadn't picked the color of the house yet I decided to take my picture and experiment with different colors in the Valspar painting tool at this link.

In the tool I can select different colors from a large color palette for the house exterior.  However, my picture has a lot of shadows so that it is difficult to use the tool to paint the exterior nicely.   It was splotchy.

I decided to abandon the Valspar tool and use the software I bought a long time ago known as chief architect home designer (which can be purchased at this link).  Before I started the two permits I developed a 3D model of my vision for the house in this program.  To get an idea of what can be done in home designer see this 3D animation I made of the house at this link.


Home designer allows me to change the colors of the house in the model and take screen shots which I then import into the Belgard paver driveway tool.  Here are some results starting with a picture of the house and a simulated paver driveway and then continuing on with the screenshot pictures from home designer imported into the paver driveway drawing tool.

At this point I am getting a better understanding of what looks good but don't know the actual color of the house and pavers I will choose.

Some basic concepts that I understand and am working with are that sometimes there cane be too much of one color.  If the roof, house color and driveway is all the same color then it will not look good.  I am considering the fact that the lawn will be green and that a green house of the same color would probably be too much green.

Another point is that to break up color schemes it is good idea to mix light colors with darker colors.  Like pavers that are sand/tan color would work better with a darker colored house and harvest blend colors (darker) work better with light colored houses.

Another point is that only certain colors work with grey roofs.  I think a grey roof is actually kind of a tough color to work with.  But that's what I have and there are some good options nevertheless.  But on the other hand if you look at my garage from the road the grey roof is pretty well hidden.

Anyway, the amount of things to consider for paver selection is turning out to be quite enormous.  This only means that it will take me longer to come up with what I want to to do.  I am definitely forming some opinions though and am in no rush.  I am of the opinion that it is better to do the job right rather than rush it and be unhappy with the result.  To see what paver I decided on check out my next blog.

Until next time, 

Happy Building,

The Dr.

How to install your own paver driveway: part 2 sub-base installation.

In the previous blog I discussed the excavation of the driveway to prepare for the paver installation. This blog is about placing the sub-base.

For the sub-base I chose road base or 1.5" crushed concrete.  Code requires 4 inches of crushed concrete (3/8" ?) or similar material for the sub-base and paver base combined.  But when I talked to the inspector he wanted 6".  But the book driveways, paths and patios by Tony McCormack implied that 6" of sub-base and an additional 1 to 2 inches of paver base materiel / bedding on top.  Anyway since I excavated 10" I put in 6" of sub-base leaving 4" for the paver base / bedding and the pavers (pavers are 2 and 3/8" thick).

The crushed concrete costs about $16 a ton which is about 1.3 yards and I ordered 17 yards.   I ended up paying $370 for the entire load.  I saved money because I shopped around.  Landscape depot offers crushed concrete for $60 a yard plus the delivery charge of $50 dollars which would have been $1070.  Got to watch your prices!  Even so I like Landscape Depot because there are some neat varieties of stone and rock there and I might one day buy something there.

On a Friday I received delivery of the sub-base shown below.

The driver of the dump truck was kind to me.  Because there was a 10" ledge he could not dump the sub-base into the middle of the driveway in fact a majority of it would have ended up in the street except he had a trick.  First he dumped some of the load at the driveway edge and then he backed is truck up on it and dumped the rest.  This in effect distributed the crushed concrete on about half the driveway.  Quite the time saver!  Below is picture of the sub-base from the other side where you can see the dump truck tire marks.

After he dumped the crushed concrete, I socialized with him because he had brought me some fill before for the concrete pads I had installed (see this blog).  He said I had done a lot of work on the house.   Anyway, after some chit chat I picked his brain on paver installation.  He actually knew quite alot.   He recommend to spread the sub-base with a concrete kumalong or concrete placer and a wide landscape rake. These are shown below.

 

By the way when you buy tools remember that Kobalt (Lowe's brand) or Husky (Home depot's brand) have lifetime warranties.   I have gotten several tape measures and even a wheel barrow for free when the ones I originally bought broke.  Lowe's has the 5% discount every time you use their credit card so Lowe's usually wins out with me.

 The next step was distributing the 20 toms of material.  In doing this I had to be accurate with my distribution because if I under filled a spot I would have to roll the wheel barrow over the crushed concrete which is soft and that is difficult.  So right up front I figured a way to get a proper amount of material on the geotextile covered driveway surface.  What I did is use a depth guide.  I made this out of a concrete block and two weights on top which is about 6" high.  This is shown in the picture below.

 

This method worked out really well and the only reason it did so good was because I was very accurate with the excavation.  Sometimes starting off a project right and with quality work can save you a lot of time an effort later on.

Once all the crushed concrete was distributed I did the final grading.  Instead of putting stakes and string lines in and measure down from the string lines like I did for the excavation, I used a laser level which I placed on the garage floor and angled down towards the curb at the entrance so that the laser beam matched the grade of the driveway.  I did this technique on the left, right and middle of the driveway.   I used the tape measure and measured down from the laser beam and made the adjustments to the fill.  The depth guides had got it pretty close.

All the adjustments that involved the laser level were made with the concrete placer.  With this device I was able to get the driveway to the correct height to within plus or minus a quarter of an inch.  After that I went over the entire driveway with the Landscape rake and the final result is shown below.

 

  

The distributing of the sub-base material took 8 hours.  It was a tough eight hours.  Luckily the weather was cool.  My collar bone ended up hurting and my neck and back ached.  However, it was a great work out and it made me feel a little more in shape.

The next step is to tamp the sub-base.   It is recommended to tamp the sub-base for every three or four inches of  sub-base thickness but I decided to tamp it after the entire 6 inches was placed.  I hope that is ok.  I intend to rent the vibratory compactor from home depot again.  I hope to do that next weekend and also get the inspection.  In the next blog I will discuss paver selection.

That's all for now,

Happy Building,

The Dr.

How to install your own paver driveway: part 1 excavation.

Having worked now on my permits for the past 2 years and 1 month, I am nearing completion.  The last project to do is the paver driveway installation.  To get to this point I have finished the boat house which is discussed at this blog, the cedar covered porch which is discussed in this blog and the expansion of a single car garage into a two car garage which is discussed in this blog.

For the paver driveway project, I found the YouTube.com videos lacking so I ordered many used books from Amazon.com for a couple bucks each.   The best book I found (and the most expensive) is Driveways, paths and patios: a complete guide to design management and construction by Tony McCormack and it is available at this link.  Also a good web video reference is at this link which is a series of 12 videos on how to install Belgard pavers.  This link is interesting but I think there are some inaccuracies in the reference.

For the first step I planned the driveway by drawing it in Visio.  This is shown below:

Once it was drawn, the next step was to lay out the perimeter for excavation.  I did this by using stakes and string lines.

Excavating the driveway mainly means getting rid of the organic materials and digging deep enough so that the sub-base, base and pavers can be installed to the right height.  For my application 10" excavation was what I decided to do.  This is so that 6" of subbase, 1.5" of base and 60 mm (about 2-3/8")  of pavers could be placed on top of the sub-grade.  For code I only need about 4" of sub-base/base, but I talked to the inspector and he wanted 6" sub-base/base.  But then I read the book and it suggests 8" sub-base/base and that is what I went with.  To ensure my depth was not too deep and not to shallow I used string lines from the garage to the curb at the street and measured in several areas to verify the depth as I was excavating.

For the excavation I had a choice, use muscle or machine.  If I used a machine like a skid steer which I could rent from Home Depot (see link) for $450 a day I could have the job done easily in one day.

However,  I chose muscle because I viewed this as an opportunity to get in some very good exercise without the expense of a gym membership and at the same time not having to pay for the excavating equipment.  A pro would probably have gone for the machine, but I am desk jockey and it turns out sitting at a desk for 9 hours a day is one of the most unhealthy things to do.  According to Dr. James Levine, director of the Mayo Clinic-Arizona State University Obesity Solutions Initiative, “Sitting is more dangerous than smoking, kills more people than HIV, and is more treacherous than parachuting. We are sitting ourselves to death.”  There is more about the side effects of sitting  at this link.

So I needed some exercise.  I also had gained some weight because my job gave us free unhealthy lunches and all the snacks we wanted in hopes we would work overtime and get the project done by the dead line.  So weighing in at 180 lbs on Christmas eve which is right at the point where a person my height is over weight I was not happy.  I decided to go on a diet at the same time that I was getting exercise from the excavation to turbocharge the effects on my health that this project would have.

The best diet I know of is the South Beach diet.  The diet has several books with recipes to follow when your on the diet.  They can be obtained used from Amazon.com at this link for a couple of bucks each.  This diet is a low carbohydrate diet with attention to the eating heart healthy by keeping the saturated fat content of the meals low.   Since my cholesterol is high, I kicked it up a notch and ate only vegetarian south beach meals.  I have found that I can lower my cholesterol by 50 points through diet.

The excavation took 21 hours which I spread out over 8 days which happened to be my christmas break.  Ya, that's how I spend my vacations because of the permits.  In addition to the 21 hours to break up the monotony I also did some landscaping, planting my home grown palm tree seedlings (see blog) and sprinkler repair (see this blog for how to work with sprinklers).  The end result of the driveway excavation is shown below.  In the picture some of the strings that were used for depth guides can be seen.

After having excavated the driveway, my muscles are strong as steel once again, its very easy to run a 5K and I've shed 7 pounds of weight.  Large weight loss like this is typical for the south beach diet for the first two weeks where phase 1 of 3 is followed.

For the next step I rented a vibratory compactor from Home Depot and ran it over the sub-grade.

 

After the compaction I laid the geotextile down.  The geotextile (see link) is a woven fabric (in my case 12.5' wide) which helps maintain separation of the sub-base and the sub-grade so that the integrity of the whole structure is maintained.  It helps improve the load bearing capacity of the driveway system and is porous to water.  It is optional but recommended by the two references I have provided for this blog.  Below is a picture of the installed geotextile weighed down so the wind will not take it away.

Well that's my update for now.  For the the next couple of weeks, I hope to accomplish adding the sub-base and then get the inspection.  See the sub-base installation in the next blog.

Until next time,  Next blog.

Happy Building.

The Dr.

The Dream of Owning a Tree Farm

About three years ago I was inspired to start a tree farm.   Why would I want to do this?  It seemed like a good way to make some money.   It would allow me to have an income other than my full time job.  I have always felt the need to have some form of income other than my job because it will eventually go away.  Whether its through a lay off or retirement, eventually I will not be working as an engineer.

Its a good idea to have some sort of income when retired.  Passive income is the holy grail.   You know the income that just keeps flowing in with out any effort.  With this kind of income there are no worries about out living your savings and there is the extra benefit of having something left to give to your loved ones.

When studying the tree farm idea, the financials seemed interesting.   Here was an investment that appreciated with time.  Every foot that the tree grew meant it was worth more.   What makes a tree have value?  The reason is because people desire mature trees to make their yards look beautiful but do not want to wait the amount of time it takes them to grow. 

Its a good idea to grow trees that grow well in your area.   Since I'm in Florida, palm trees grow well and this is what I started with.   There are so many palm trees in my area that it is fairly easy to take a walk and find a tree to collect seeds from. Here are a few pictures of the palm trees that I collected seeds from to start growing.  From left to right (Alexander, Queen, Bismark, Date)

 

I thought about selling the seeds I found on eBay but I realized there may be some legal issues.  Sending seeds across state lines may be problematic due to the agricultural department regulations.  I know that they don't like citrus to cross state lines due to diseases like canker.   Also in the state of Florida they want you to become a seed dealer and get a license.  Anyway, because the red tape I was discouraged and didn't not pursue this.

I pursued the tree farm idea instead and started looking for larger parcels of land that were inexpensive.   Large parcels nearby were few and far between and cost millions.  However 10 acres could be found in my price range about an hour away.  But the distance made me wonder how often I would have to take this drive.  Really if you have a farm you want to live on the farm to tend to it.

Nevertheless I was still excited about the tree farm idea and decided to start growing the palms on my property.  I purchased some used black plastic pots and filled them with cow manure and top soil and planted the seeds.  Some websites suggest that you take the fruit off the seed but this takes a long time so I just planted the seeds as mother nature provided them to me.  I planted about 15 seeds per pot.  It wasn't long before I had 150 palm trees growing.  I must have had 10 different varieties.  For a video on how to grow palm trees see this one.

I was excited about how much these trees could sell for.  For example consider 10 year old date palm which sells for $650 at this link.  That one tree earned $65 per year.  Imagine having 1500 trees on a farm, the farm would grow in value by 100,000 dollars per year.  In ten years it would be worth 1 million dollars.   Wow! Only 10 years to become a millionaire!  The tree farm of course is a lot of work.  Not only is there tending to the trees but then there is also finding a buyer.  There are risks too.  What if a hurricane comes or a disease strikes and they all die.  I'm no expert on what it takes to operate a tree farm but maybe some day I'll talk to one.

Anyway back to my seedlings, I felt the need to water them even though palm tress seem to do fine with the rain water that god provides.  I realized I may not be available to water them every day so to solve this I added some sprinklers tied to my automatic timer.  I no longer had to perform the watering task.  I also came up with a method to keep the weeds from growing around the plants by putting the pots on top of landscape fabric.  See my setup below:

 

Early on I found I needed to separate the seedlings into their own pots and after a year I found that I needed to replenish the dirt in the pots.  I encountered many night crawlers that had taken up residence in the pots.  Maybe I should have opened up a bait store.

I did have trouble with squirrels.  They dug up the seeds and ate them.  I tried capturing them in a trap I purchased from Lowes.  It was fun trapping these critters and even though I have eaten squirrel before I decided to relocate it to another area.  But then another squirrel took up residence in the yard and I was back to where I started.  Below you can see the troublesome critter in his jail cell.

The task of tending to the seedlings and starting a tree farm, got sidelined by my next new interest, remodeling my house.  I have been remodeling the house now for about 2 years and have finished, converting a single car garage into a two car garage, building a cedar covered porch and a boat house with a lift.  All that is left to finish the permits is to put in a paver driveway which I am working on now.

Because of the construction the automatic sprinklers for the palms were off due to the damage to the sprinkler system when tearing up the drive way.   And so its been two years that those seedling have gone without water except rain water.   Out of the 150 seedlings I had, I ended up with about 40 left.  Some died because they were completely covered over with banana tree leaves and had no light. The 40 seedlings are doing well and have grown despite the very little dirt left in the pot.  See picture below of the Alexander palms.

 

Due to my getting sidelined on the dream of owning a tree farm, I thought that I would never use the seedling palm trees I grew because I had nowhere to plant them.  However, my attention has turned to landscaping my yard and I have realized that there are many places for these trees in my very own yard.  What this amounts to is about $650 worth of palm trees to choose from for the yard.  They were not exactly free since I paid money for the pots, manure, fabric, sprinklers and topsoil but that was probably about $150.  This means that I have enjoyed a savings of 77% just for the plants and additional savings by taking care of the landscaping myself..

Cue the cash register sound.

Happy Building

The Dr.