The patterns one can find in ice never cease to amaze me. Talk about the ultimate Rorschach test. If you have a few minutes, click on the image and look around. I think you will be amazed at how many interesting images and shapes you will discover. So far, this winter has been quite mild with daytime temperatures occasionally hitting the mid-forties and often remaining above freezing. Given the amount of mud surrounding the construction site, it is generally advantageous when working on the outside of the house for the ground to be frozen. Naturally, now that work is moving to the inside, when warmer temperatures would be appreciated, the forecast is showing us heading into a cold spell.

One area of the River House that has been very difficult for me to visualize has been the stairs and railings. As of today, our construction foreman single-handedly completed temporary ones to facilitate interior work on the house. Seeing and using them has helped us to finalize design decisions for the final versions. I think they may be one of my most favorite design elements of the house. The photo perspective makes them appear cramped and steep. In reality, they are quite spacious and have a 7-inch rise over 11-inch run, which is widely regarded as the optimal ratio for climbing and descending.

Occasionally, a photo and title tell the whole story. I found my brother like this on our couch this morning talking to Jeanine. I could not resist running for my camera. Marie, his better half, requested a headshot for work. Although I do not have a proper photo studio set up at the moment, I did manage to make an acceptable image, which was not much of a challenge with such a lovely subject.

My brother Mark and his wife Marie arrived late yesterday as did Jeanine returning from her yoga retreat in Mexico. This morning, the kids joined us for brunch before we set out for tours of Kyle’s new house, Formlabs (where Maya works), and finally Maya’s apartment. We returned to Concord for a lovely dinner at Papa Razzi, our go-to restaurant for really good food. It has been quite a while since we spent an entire day with family and it felt really wonderful.

My brother Mark and his wife Marie flew in from Minneapolis this evening to visit for the weekend. I had hoped to do some grocery shopping before their arrival but lost several hours of the day having to deal with a flat tire. I picked up a nail from the River House construction site and finding someone with availability to repair it took much longer than I would have thought. On the positive side, I was able to do my grocery shopping with Mark and Marie which resulted in a far healthier and yummy set of options for dinner. Mark prepared steaks which included searing them on their sides, something I have not witnessed before.

I am happy that our first proper snow of the season did not arrive until all the sheathing work on the River House was completed. Just two more steps before the shell is weather tight. First, we need to install the water and ice shield on the roof and then we need to install the windows and doors. Hopefully, we can complete both of these activities before the end of the month. At that point, we can introduce some provisional heating to improve working conditions for the electrical, plumbing, and HVAC work.

Last night the drilling rig was repositioned for the second bore hole location. The casing for the first bore hole can be seen to the left of the mini-excavator’s left tread. Bedrock was encountered at 141 feet with minimal water. The next steps are to install the geothermal loop tubing into the holes and then fill the holes from the bottom up with grout to ensure proper thermal coupling of the pipes to the ground.

Our geothermal heating and cooling system will require two 300 feet deep boreholes to accept the vertical closed-loop pipes through which water and anti-freeze will circulate to pump heat from the Earth into the house (in winter) or from the house into the Earth (during summer). The first well was completed today. We had 142 feet of clay before hitting bedrock and managed to avoid any aquifers. This is a great result since dense clay and bedrock are both great thermal conductors. With any luck, our second bore hole will be completed tomorrow.

Throughout the design process for the River House, I have been very thoughtful about sight lines both internal and external. Now that the first and second-floor framing is complete, I have been able to walk through the house and visually verify that my calculations were correct. Everything is as it should be and as a bonus, I discovered a sight line that I had not considered. It is possible to look through four different second-story windows to see “through” the house into the patio area and “through” the house again to the other side of the river. You would need a ladder or drone to appreciate this view but I thought it cool nonetheless. So cool in fact, that I decided to fly through the four window openings with my drone while shooting a video. It should be noted that I use my drone almost exclusively for photography and flying through obstacles is not something I have had much experience doing. As I made my approach, I was so focused on setting up the sight line that I managed to run into the house for my first crash in several years. The propellors got trashed but fortunately that was the only damage to the drone. Just before the fateful moment, I did manage to capture the view I was looking for.

Kyle and I spent ten hours today, our longest work session to date, completing the installation of strapping on the ceiling in his basement. Normally, this is a simple matter of cutting the 1×3 straps to length and nailing them perpendicular to the floor joists at each intersection, and then repeating the pattern every 16 inches. We used my cordless nailer to drive the roughly 700 nails required for the 350 or so intersections. In our case, however, we had to shim over 100 of them to compensate for the large variations in joist size/position. This was by far the most labor-intensive and time-consuming part of the job but should result in a nice and flat ceiling.

My cousin Heather sent this photo of Chacala Beach with the following message.

Hi Chowbee,  Buppy and Carlos —We are having an excellent first day on our retreat, starting with yoga at 7a, breakfast, and a walk along the beach to explore Chacala beach and harbor. Then lunch, yacking, inability to decide what to do next….nap, pool, hot tub, hammock, reading,  painting, more  yacking…..before yoga at 5 and then dinner. I am trying to lure Jeanine and Carol away from attending a rather fruity sounding program tonight—“self care sanctuary”—to drinking cocktails and playing gin instead. Let’s see if I can prevail over the better angels of their natures, etc. Please send news!

Jeanine shared this photo she took of what she calls her Happy Stairs. I am left to wonder where they lead.

On the home front, Kyle and I continued working diligently preparing his basement renovation project for the drywall crew coming later this week. We had hoped to avoid strapping the ceiling to preserve another 3/4 inch of headroom but upon further investigation, it became apparent that this addition would be necessary to compensate for imperfections in the floor joists. This has added another day and a half to our work and we hope to complete the remainder tomorrow.

Jeanine traveled to Chacala, Mexico today where she will be spending the next week at a yoga retreat with my cousin Heather and cousin-in-law Carol. Located about 90 minutes north of Puerto Vallarta within a small and remote fishing village on the Pacific Ocean, Mar de Jade was founded by Dr. Laura del Valle and two of her siblings.

Back at home, Kyle and I worked hard to put the final touches on framing, plumbing, and HVAC vents in his basement prior to the start of drywalling which will be done by a contractor starting next week.

Starting on Monday drilling begins for two 300-foot deep geothermal boreholes that will support our ground source heat pump. The crew arrived today to set up the rig and excavate a slurry pit. I am glad I was onsite because they were going to locate the boreholes using Massachusetts state setback regulations rather than the more stringent ones mandated by the town of Concord. It would have been a very expensive mistake had I not intervened. Ideally, we would like to hit bedrock quickly and not find any water but Murphy’s Law suggests just the opposite will be true. Drilling is expected to take three days so we should know the answers by mid-next week.

For some time now, Nicolai has been working to promote the development of regional amputee soccer teams in the US. Next month will kick off with a match between his New England Revolution squad and the New York Metros. Hopefully, the weather will cooperate and the teams will not have to contend with frigid or snowy conditions.