Update: 8/17

I am still waiting on the septic application to become a permit. I should have final information this week.

My Yuchai dozer is down. Transmission problems. The hoses china ships with these things are junk, fortunately there are only a couple 5/8" hoses that need replacing. Going to have to find the screen where the hose deteriortated clogged the shuttle clutch. Going to be a job. Might need to get the dozer home for repairs.

Regardless of the situation, I have saved thousands of dollars in land development by doing this stuff myself. Just the building pad, road grading, entrances, land clearing has taken so many hours. A contractor here would charge a minimum of $55-$65 per hour for this work.

Most people say that on unimproved land, you are looking at $75-$100k in costs for infrastructure. Here are some example costs:

$10k-20k for a well
$5k for septic
$25k for power; plus $100-$150 monthly expense
$15k-20k in grading, paving depending on site
$3-$5k fencing

My costs when not including construction equipment or repairs:

$8400 well
$3000 septic
$10000 5180 watt solar replaces PG&E and runs well
$5000 for misc on power (inverters, batteries)
$1000 solar mounts
$300 gravel for driveway
$100 in gates
$190 barn permit
$2300 barn
$100 in fencing material ( I had some old pre-existing fencing )
Landscaping costs will be incremental and will cost $50 a month or so as I add trees, etc.

So as you can see this is still expensive but nowhere near $75k. Plus, I have no monthly overhead bills associated with power. I will however hookup to PG&E when we build our main house in the future unless the $5k air conditioners (DC powered) that cool 720 sq feet each and are 30 SEER become $3k. Then these can run right of the batteries and bypass the inverter.

Well, I have a load into this property now. I will have more money before I am done, lots more. However, even in this depressed real estate market, once a home is build (2800 sq feet) with the setting (views of three mountain ranges) the house and property combined will be well worth over $580k.

Update on the property

It's been about 3 weeks since I posted. Here's the update:

The county is still waiting on my septic system due to the water table being right within the 5' range. We did not have enough rainfall this year to consider it a 'normal year', so I still wait making interest payments on the land. It's starting to get quite expensive. I am hopefully going to have a permit approved in the next few weeks.

Things done:
- Solar panels purchased (5180 watts) for off-grid
- PG&E is 900' away, probably will hook up someday when I want A/C in the house and we build our real house
- 12x36 barn on property - not assembled.
- Almost finalized my agricultural barn permit, just need some gravel on the driveway to get the public works portion finalized.

- We picked our final house plans when we build in a few years (Wife will have to work to get that done) - 2818 sq foot house

Lights out: GOP stays in the house

There is a story buzzing around the internet, but hardly any news media outlets are covering it. Pelosi turns the lights out on the GOP after the GOP stayed in the house and refused to go on the 5 week vacation without proposing an energy vote. I can't find a video of this anywhere, however I turned on CSPAN last night and there was some footage before the democrats left the house. John Boehner was quite adamant about a vote on energy regulation, but democrats kept putting it off saying it would stop votes on other important bills, not energy regulation.

You can see the article here about what happened:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0808/House_Dems_turn_out_out_the_light_but_GOP_keep_talking.html?showall

I was impressed with the veracity in which the GOP finally went after the dems in the final hours of the day on Friday. It's historic. First, when a vote came to adjourn, the 50+ members of the GOP stayed. Then, Pelosi turned off the microphone; then the lights, then one of the GOP members somehow got the microphone back on, Pelosi turned it back off again.

The GOP stayed for 5 hours talking about energy crisis and they are fed up. It's about time as the American public has been outraged about this issue for six months.

The dems better listen, otherwise they are going to get wiped out. This issue crosses all party line barriers, and even many environmentalists are saying lets get energy independent with our own oil, wind and start using some natural gas too. You should see pickensplan.com if you are interested in that particular plan. It's quite good and will take time to implement, but a step in the right direction.

Well, enough about this for now. Hopefully we get some real energy changes over the next few years, my gas bill is killing me now. . . any extra income I had goes in the fuel tank. Forget about saving any money or putting money into the property right now.

I hope you all contact your congressman or senator and tell them how you feel. They are actually listening right now and know a revolt is in the works. The government can only ignore it's people for so long. I am surprized some nut-job hasn't gone out and whacked some of the liberal leadership in congress/senate who want to keep us dependent, want to raise our taxes, want us to just become Europe. Hey, at least it'd be a start. LOL BTW, congressional approval rating is less than 10%. Even Bush's approval rating is near 30%.

Brock