Steps up to Porch

Not much to say here, I'll let the photo captions speak for themselves. 

Laying out three steps.  Each one will have four stones, and
  they will be angled slightly as they drop down to driveway level

With the location of the bottom step established, I set a level stick in place to
measure the total drop down from the porch.  Accounting for a 1/4" per foot
 slope on each step (for drainage), that left two risers at 4.5" each.
(Ignore the bucket-- it is only there to prop up the sticks for the photo.)

All three steps boxed out and compacted.

Beginning to bed the steps in 1-2" of sand

Laying the bricks that form the risers.  The four flat bricks in front are just to
provide extra weight to hold the vertical bricks in place while I compact
 the sand behind them.

Everything in place and getting ready to sweep sand into the joints

Ready for action!

Sewer and Water

I have to say... building mall does have its disadvantages.  Take for example, the site work to connect to the public sewer and water mains.  I lined up a site contractor before I ever broke ground in July 2015.  He was a couple weeks later than I'd hoped in excavating my foundation, but no big deal.

Fast forward to Fall 2015: I had my plumbing roughed in inside the house and I requested that the contractor proceed in connecting the sewer and water services.  After a couple months back and forth, he wasn't able to fit me in, so I made do for the winter.

2016 kept me busy with work, so I only made sporadic progress on the house.  At the end of summer, things were finally moving along and I set the goal to move in around Thanksgiving. Mid September, I scheduled my connections for the following month  Long story short, my small job was evidently a lower priority than the bigger, high-dollar jobs.  He started on the sewer November 23 and finished the water on January 31, 2017.  Granted, there were many weather-related delays in there, but there were also plenty of fine days with the machines sitting idle.

Sorry for venting.  Thanks for bearing with me, but the lesson learned is to budget way more time for contractors to do their thing than you would expect.  It is classic for them to be juggling multiple jobs at one time.  Here are the photos:

The existing sewer main was about 8' below grade.  The excavation gets pretty deep at the connection point!

My lateral had to run under an existing storm drain.  You can see that water was
filtering into the excavation, complicating matters.

They dealt with the water by excavating a little deeper and dumping stone in the bottom of the trench.  By running a pump buried in the stone, they kept that area they were working in dry.  This shows the 6" trunk line (green) and the 4" lateral connecting in from the house.  The trunk line will extend farther to allow a future connection for the main house to be built sometime later.

The water meter pit is in the foreground, with a 2" polyethylene service pipe.  In the old days, 3/4" or 1" was adequate, but with the new sprinkler codes, we need a larger pipe to feed the fire protection system.

The 2" lateral tees off to a 1 1/2" house service.  For now, I have a freeze-proof yard hydrant near the end of the tee.  When the main house gets built, this will be removed and the 2" line will be extended.

Compressed Earth Block Workshop

This natural building technique is relatively new to me, so I wanted to make some test blocks to see if they would work out for the finished surface of my porch. My first attempt was a failure after using the very clayey soil that I've used for the adobe floors because I couldn't get the cement mixed in with the soil adequately.  I found a source of a looser soil that still has a relatively high clay content.

Regardless, the first step is to pass the soil in the 1/4 screen to loosen it up. 

Interestingly, the water content in the soil was pretty high in the morning, but

by afternoon, it had dried out much more than I would have expected.

This is the mixing bucket.  We tried three recipes with varying ratios of cement (1:7, 1:11 and 1:15), and you can see the scale's readout that allowed us to measure precisely.  

This is one of the 1:11 mixes.   After mixing this thoroughly, we also added water to get the mixture to the optimum moisture content (more water was needed as the day went on).  It took some practice, but we found that if you squeeze a handful of mixed soil, it should form a coherent ball, and that ball should shatter when dropped onto a hard surface from about 6 feet high.

This is the simple mold: 2x4 sides screwed onto a 2x8 base.  The first blocks were pretty thin, so we ended up filling it, compacting it slightly by hand, and then re-filling.  Next time, I'll try 2x6 forms to save that step.  (FYI, to make a large number of blocks, you can buy a human-powered press, or gas-powered pneumatic presses.  Since I'm only going to need a few hundred, that's not worth it for now.)

Here, we're compressing the blocks with a hand-tamper hammering on a 3" thick board that fits inside the molds. It only takes about a minute of non-strenuous pounding, and you can feel when you are getting diminishing returns.  You can also hear the difference when it's time to stop, but that is pretty subtle.

I was surprised how hard it was to get the blocks out of the mold.  

We needed to remove two sides, or it was just too sticky to come out whole.

Knocking it with a hammer helped free the block.

 An array of block after a few days of drying.  Since the recipe includes cement, they should be kept shaded and moist, and they won't achieve their full strength for a month.  I've left a couple random pieces out in the rain, and they've held up with no visible degradation.  Once they've all cured, I'll try some compressive tests on dry samples and soaked samples, comparing the results of different cement contents.  

Many thanks to Kate and Bob for the photos and assistance!