Our New England Energy Star ICF Home Build: Clearing the Lot and Milling the Trees

We purchased our building lot in February of 2012. We fell in love with this lot right away. We liked the location, the beautiful woods, and the fact that the lot slopes down, making it perfect for a walk out basement. Here is a photo of the property before any work was started.

The first order of business was to start clearing the driveway. The lot is a double back lot, which means we have a long driveway to clear to reach our building lot. In fact, the driveway is 1/4 of a mile long!

With the help of a Kubota tractor, a couple of good chain saw's, and lots of cutting and digging up rocks and stumps, our driveway was roughed in by October of 2012.

Then we started to clear the building lot. There were a LOT of trees! In fact, we had to clear over 200 trees! We saved all the big logs and hired a portable sawmill to come and make lumber from our logs. We did three full days of milling in total, starting in November of 2012, and finishing in 2013. We ended up with beautiful oak that we will use for our floors, trim, and decorative timbers throughout our house. We were also lucky enough to find some black walnut logs locally that we also milled, and will be used for the finish work in the house. We are very excited about using the trees from the lot for our home!