The Alpha and Omega for Our Green Machine

To build a house, you start by digging.  Last November, we dug the first critical hole toward excavating our site: the perc (short for percolation) test.  The land had been cleared of its miserable thorny life and a brush pile the size and shape of a small hangar had been pushed back against the south side.   We then knew where we wanted our home to be, but we couldn't commit to its location without knowing at the outset where all our biologic outcomes were going to end up. We needed to locate the septic field, then we could work backward. The last shall be first.

Present at the perc ground breaking event were Michael and me, Pete our contractor, Neal the engineer, Evan the digger, and someone from the Health Department who was there to make sure our waste wouldn't be seeping into the Hudson water system. He gazed sleepily around, ambled behind everyone, and as far as I remember never spoke. 

The perc test is a surprisingly simple process for determining the location for such critical final results.  Neal first dug a small hole -- a foot or so deep -- around the area that would serve as our ideal septic field, a few hundred feet northeast of our fantasy house, up a slope and a safe distance flow-wise from where we wanted to garden and dig our pond.  Neal filled the hole with a bucket of water and then we all stared at the water as it percolated into the soil.  It's like watching a very, very slow race, where the water in the winning hole drops an inch within ten minutes.  Our hole beat this time.  Neal, who looks and sounds disconcertingly like Gary Shandling, flashed a toothy grin.  "Terrific." 

Evan hopped into a small digger and forked out the hole until it was about six feet deeper, first clawing up a thick layer of cakey top soil, then about four feet of silty loam, finally scraping across a base of gray clay. Everyone was excited.  Apparently this is a really, really good shit hole.  Pete looked down, "You don't ever see this in Columbia Country."

Neal nodded his head in agreement, and, as his only contribution to the event – but a welcome one -- so did the Health Department person.

Pete turned to us. "This could save you over $20,000.  If the clay were at a higher level, you'd have to build a berm."

"Huh." I said. "What's a berm?"  I have never owned a house. As an adult, I have always lived in apartments where God's representatives – superintendents and management agents -- took care of life's comforts. I envisioned a hideous above ground tank that stored our refuse, hoisted up through a pipe and pump contraption, where it festered until some low-paid local came around with a giant sucking hose and trucked it off to a toxic dump. Neal explained that a berm is a big mound of earth, high and porous enough to allow the sewage water from the septic tank to percolate.  At the time, I wondered why an earth hump would cost $20,000, but I have learned over the past few months after watching our house and land budget slowly bulge up to morbid obesity that $20,000 is a bargain.

Evan dug a few more holes in other places, but the original $20,000- saving hole remained the best spot. 

We then walked down toward the southeast base of our site where I hope to have a swimming pond. After only a foot, Evan's digger hit clay and water.  Pete smiled, "You won the lottery again.  Perfect for a pond."  Neal agreed, showing us his toothy grin and he pushed a couple of tiny flags into the earth to designate our septic field and pond.  We handed the health inspector a check for $500 as payment for his silent but essential presence in blessing our excretion field, and everyone left.  Except for a few visits from the surveyors, our recent nasty winter closed off the site and that was the end of earthmoving for the next few months. 

So we had the place where all things must end, and, with spring well in place, last week the Greenport highway department dug out the culvert for the driveway, where all things must begin. As with the berm, I didn't know what a culvert was -- or rather I had some misguided ideas from low-grade movies and books. "Children, stay away from the culvert!"  But the hapless toddler or reckless unappealing teener would crawl anyway into a nearby steel maw gaping out of the earth, where a rattlesnake would bite her or he would be washed away in a sudden flash flood. Culverts were also excellent locations for dumping murder victims. I didn't realize until last week that they had any purpose other than contrivances for bad plots. However, since attending Home Building University I have learned that if you don't have a culvert, your driveway will dissolve with the first big rain in the spring or will turn into a skating rink in the winter.

 The Greenport Highway Department is in charge of culverts, and as it happens, we know the Greenport Highway Supervisor, an appealing young man, who lives on our road.  He's also running for re-election this year on the Democratic slate, so we've been to the same local town and democratic committee meetings. With the first attempt, the worker placed the culvert too near the surface of the driveway and the gravel area was too narrow to support the monster trucks that will be bringing in the modules for our house. I assume our neighbor noticed that the trench was insufficient on his way home, because the workers came back the next day with even larger and louder equipment, which dug out a deeper trench and gave the culvert a thick layer, top and bottom, of excellent gravel.  The Supervisor's good attention to our culvert might be due to neighborliness or to my recent elevated positions as Treasurer of the Greenport Democratic Committee and as a member on the data-mining subcommittee of the voter registration committee of the Columbia County Democratic Committee.  Or he might just be an excellent Highway Supervisor.  It doesn't matter. He has my vote.  Local politics.  It's how they get you but that's another plotline in our Hudson story.

At this time, however, the plot to our house has most of our attention.  And now that the alpha and omega have been established, let the tracts and tunnels between them begin! But children, stay away from the culvert!