The Thousand Islands

I've read an interesting article in the Washington Post about the "Thousand Islands" in the St. Lawrence river.

There are actually over 1800 islands in the archipelago on the US-Canada border, some of which are huge, and some of which are very, very small.

Pictured here is the aptly-named "Just Room Enough" Island.

The Canadian side of the archipelago is a national park, and the area is also a world-renown biodiversity site. Amusing Planet has lots of beautiful photos of the area. It certainly reminds me of our own archipelago!

Our house is on Bing Maps now

I stumbled across some new aerial photography of our little hus on Bing maps of all places. And, sure enough, our house, plus the guest house, and the walkway between them, all show up as clear as day! I think that's very cool. This is a newer photo than the Apple maps from last year, as the walkway is now visible.

Aspö itself is also looking fetching in the sunshine.

The direct link will take you right to our island, and from there, a virtual tour of the archipelago.

Apple Maps

There are some reports complaining about the accuracy of the map application on the new iPhone. I haven't seen any problems myself, in fact, I am a happy user, because it appears that Apple is using much newer information in Scandinavia.

 

How do I know that? Well, I took a look at Aspö on my iPad and was pleasantly surprised to see our house!

I've made a collection of four screenshots zooming into the black roofs of our little cabin and the even teenier guest house beside it. 

How cool.

Surveying the path

My sister recommended an iPhone app to track my walks with Ollie. It works amazingly well in my neighborhood.

It never occurred to me to use it on Aspö, however, until Tony mentioned it at dinner one night. The next morning, I turned on data roaming, and Sooz and I walked the whole path.

The app worked just as perfectly out in the archipelago, and it produced the map above. The starting point is our house, which is close to the junction of the main path. The walk from home to the Waxholms dock at the south end of the island is exactly a half-mile, making it an even mile round-trip to drop off trash or pick up mail.

The circumnavigatory path is 1.75 miles around, making the total length of the pathways two and a quarter miles. The elevation information was also interesting:

The first mile shows the big drop down to the dock from our house, with the corresponding steep rise on the return (which I braved many times with our wheelbarrow crammed full of goods).

Back at our house, there's a gentle rise until we drop back down to the shore at the northeast. Then it's a pretty long uphill, past Janne's house towards the center of the island, and a downhill stretch past Tony's house, back to our home. The little app calculated the tallest part of the path is 78 feet above sea level. Pretty darn cool for an iPhone!

Ollie on the Island

I haven't posted too much about Ollie's life on Aspö but Sooz called me this morning with a cute story which I thought I'd share.

To set the scene, Ollie seems to have settled well. He palpably enjoys his walks, explores actively, and has been marking his territory diligently. However, it's a lot rockier and hillier than our usual paths in England, and we have learned he's physically up for only a couple of jaunts a day. (He did have one bunny-chasing episode up at Margaret and Janne's; it scared the hell out of Sooz, but Janne told me later he was pretty impressed at Ollie's speed through the brush.)

As Sooz pointed out to me today, he's obviously getting to know the lay of the island pretty well. I left yesterday on the taxi boat; Ollie's seen a whole bunch of departures from that dock. This morning, while breakfasting on the deck, Sooz heard the taxi boat in the distance, and in a flash, Ollie trotted off towards the dock. Sooz was chasing after him through the woods in her pajamas but Ollie was on a mission and it took her a while to catch him. (I wish I had a photo of that for the blog!)

So we assume now that Ollie not only knows how to get to the boat dock from our house, but also that the sound of the boat means someone's coming. Maybe we're reading too much into his behaviour, but I like the thought, so I'm sticking with it.

Fencing

My favourite feature of the house is the big front deck that thrusts out over the rock. The problem is that it's about 4-5 feet high, and if someone were to take a spill off the edge, it would be pretty serious. The risk is even higher for visiting children and dogs, too. (Especially squirrel-chasing corgis with surgically-repaired backs.)

I really want to keep the deck unobstructed but I also think it's prudent to have something that protects the edge when we have guests.

From my time living in Dallas, I saw many removable mesh pool fences, like the one pictured above. They are on poles which fit into the ground and are kept under tension to keep kids out of the pool. The big advantage is they can be easily pulled out and rolled up, so we can keep the deck clear between visitors and parties.

I'm talking to a couple of fence providers in the US and UK; my thought is to attach brackets at the edge of the deck and insert the poles there, so everything stays flush and out of the way when the fence is removed.

Foundations

Janne and I talked in more detail about the process of making the foundations. Once we get the permit go-ahead, Janne will rent a drill and order the concrete, along with reinforcing steel bars and a bunch of paper tubes.

For each foundation point, he'll drill down at least 20cm, (maybe more depending on the quality of the rock), and slide in a few steel rods. The paper tube goes over the rods and is filled in with the concrete to make a cylindrical post. The tubes are supported by lumber to keep them straight during pouring and curing. The plan for our main house (shown above) calls for 10 foundation points.

Janne has a laser mechanism to ensure the tops of all the foundations are level. Because the rock is uneven, each of the foundation tubes will be different heights. By the front door, they'll be 20 or 30 cm, and in the back, facing Claes' house, they'll be much higher, well over a meter. That will be handy to for us to fit the water tanks under the house.

About hundred 20 kilo bags of concrete will be needed. I plan to take a few days off when Janne's ready so I can provide the manual labor to haul everything up from the dock, and to help him with the foundations as much as I can.

Lots of action this Sunday!

Got an email from Stefan this afternoon. He sent along the newest drawings based upon the latest map info and my measurements with Rutger last weekend.

The main difference is that we've moved the little house to be alongside the big house so they're both looking downhill towards the water. Our idea is the houses are related to each other as their doors are in the same direction, i.e. someone standing at the front door of one house can look left (or right) to the front door of the other.

A good island map

The Värmdö kommun has a great website; they even have an English page or two. But the most fun (for me, anyways) is through their map function.

I found a great image of Aspö, which shows the placement of all of the houses on the island. I made a small modification to add a circle where our house will go.

Salubrious Effluvia

As planned, Rutger and I went out to Aspö for a day's worth of honest toil on the land.

Besides the chainsaw work, our main goal was to measure the perimeter as accurately as we could. Here's a shot of Rutger with his trusty tape measure.

We made good progress, and I've sent Stefan an updated sketch for us to include in the planning application. I'll post that as soon as it's completed.

At Janne's suggestion, we also set out as precisely as we could where the houses should sit on the property. The four corners of each house were set with yellow spray paint, pictured here.

They're not very good yellow dots; I don't think I have much of a career as a graffiti artist!

We get mail!

Couple things arrived today. First was the bank statement, showing the successful transfer of a slightly worryingly large amount of money. The exchange rate we got was 6.888 Swedish Kronor to the dollar. I had planned 6.9 in my budget so that's about right. (Wouldn't mind it skyrocketing into the 7's though!)

Second was a letter from Värmdö which Sooz was pretty much able to read, (and which Margaret later confirmed), that said they had received our application. They asked for a drawing of the house's orientation on the land, and that is exactly what Rutger and I plan to confirm in a couple weeks, so that's fine.

Drawings Pt. 2

This is a close-up of the land drawing from Stefan's files in the previous post. As I said before, this is the one item that's still unresolved for me. I really need to go back to Aspö and have another very good study so I can visualise it.

I spoke to Rutger yesterday, and he's up for going out with me one weekend (probably October 6) for some detailed measuring and clearing. He has a chain saw he's itching to use. In fact, he said he was ready for an "Aspö Chainsaw Massacre". No wonder we get along...

The slice of land itself

First off, it's not on the water; we couldn't afford that, even if such a property came available, and they usually don't. These are really family homes and as such they get handed down from one generation to another. So we're inland. You can see it as the greenish wedge on the image attached.

The long back edge parallels the electricity line that runs through the island. It's fairly grassy and meadowy back there. Going towards the sharper point of the perimiter, facing the water, it's essentially a big piece of granite. That's perfect. We're going to put a set of foundation pilings right on the rock. (Well, Janne will, to be precise.) The house will sit on top of those. You can see a panoramic image of the land in the link section.

One big open issue is exactly how we will orient the house on the land. We have a number of sometimes-conflicting concerns:
1. We want to have maximum sunshine
2. We want to have the best view of the forest below
3. The more the house sets on the granite, the easier it is to build
4. It needs to be 4.5 meters from the edge of the property line
5. We're also going to build a small guest house, so the relationship between the two houses needs to be considered

In our visit in early August, we set out the orientation as best we could. I think it's pretty close, but not yet there 100%. There needs to be more visits, measurements, and decision-making before Janne starts drilling the pilings!