On to the inside- Building the Winery Part 16

Watching the building get built so rapidly in the beginning gets one really excited. But then the work moves to the inside and it seems to go to a crawl. Unless you are there everyday watching the hustle of the tradesmen put in the plumbing, the electrical, the insulation, and the stairs, it just appears very little is going on from the outside.

The exterior isn't done yet though. The siding needs to be put up (sometime next week), the grading needs to be done to allow the back patio and Dominion Power to come in and complete their assignments. The main doors have to be installed, and probably a dozen other things needed to put on the finishing touches.

But it is the inside now that is getting the attention. Without the lighting in, it is shadowy most of the time. Natural sunlight is all they have to see what they are doing. Fortunately there are plenty of windows to let the rays in, and for the most part the weather has been cooperating and not delivering rain or completely cloudy days.

For the longest time if you wanted to see the action upstairs, you needed to have the skills of a monkey to climb up the interior posts and framework to reach the loft (the workers conveniently used ladders that they removed every night). However, the stairway came in and was installed a week ago, so normal people could advance up the stairs and walk around the upper deck, looking over the railing to the center facade below. It is a simple railing, appropriate for a "really nice barn" , creating the inside diameter for a circle of offices, a conference room, and a small kitchenette. The upstairs will be the administrative offices for the winery, having room for Diane's office and any of those other jobs that will be created to service the winery, like someone to do the purchasing, manage functions, or be responsible for concessionary duties. 

The insulation was put in this week. To see these guys do this as quick as they did was amazing. What would take me a month took just 2 days with 2 guys. Long blankets of insulation were balanced on the end of sticks, raised 15 or 20 feet in the air and then tucked into their respective slots. This week the drywall is going up which will cover most of the interior walls and some of the ceilings. The center area will retain the wood look though, and wainscoting will enhance the walls in the gift shop, tasting room, and function room. 

For those that follow us on Facebook, I encourage you to look up Hampton Roads Winery and see the virtual tour that is posted. It is a little dizzying, and there certainly are some artistic freedoms taken, but for the most part it is a decent representation of the downstairs.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS ?  

Wood and more wood - Building the Winery: Part 15

There seems to be no end to the amount of wood being put into this building. Trucks come in, each with their own tail-end forklift, to pull off and position mounds and mounds of wood. Pallets of panels, skids of pressure-treated lumber, 4" x 4"'s, 2" x 4"'s, rolls of Tyvek, and beams so big one person cannot lift even one end off the ground.

A crew comes in on a Friday, 12 or 13 in all, and before you know it a building is taking shape by the hands of a well-orchestrated crew. The average height of these workers cannot be more than 5' tall. They may be short in height, but proportionally all have the strength of gorillas. One person will "grab" seven or eight 2" x 4" x 12"'s and place on his shoulder to move it into position, all without skipping a beat. Their workplace language is American-Spanish.....for every 5 words of Spanish there is an English word thrown in that has no translation other than it meets specifications on a drawing. They work from sun up to sun down, taking only a short siesta around lunchtime. Coconut milk and water are the refreshing drinks of choice. Very few of them hold a hammer.....pneumatic air guns and Skil saws are the noise making implements on the work site.

In less than a week the walls are up and the roof is on. The roof is mostly made up of a series of pre-made trusses, designed and built off site and then within just a couple of hours put in place by a crane as workers nail in position. Where trusses weren't located, rafters, beams  & joists were built on location by these agile workers. From the start of the walls to this part of the assembly took only one week.

As you look at the picture, you will see what appears to be seven doors in the front part of the building. As I may have explained earlier, the building is being built using a classic carriage house design. The seven doors represent the seven carriage ports, however only the center one is actually a usable door. The others are faux doors because they really just provide a decorative front for the building, with actual working walls on the inside of the building. The two on the left are where the bottle room and rest rooms will be, while the 2 on the far right are on the north wall of the gift shop.

In this later view you will see the new Visitor's Center starting to take shape. It is no longer just a 2-dimensional building on a set of architectural plans. The walls have been covered with Tyvek, and the roof is waiting for the roofers to come in and staple on tar paper, followed by the roof shingles. 

When it is completed it will be over 6000 square feet, with the downstairs being open to the public (less the bottle storage room of course), while the upstairs will house Diane's office, along with a conference room,several other offices and a kitchenette. It is now time to get super serious as to how the inside will be laid out......the tasting bar, the gift shop, the display area, and the function room with its fireplace for those cooler evenings.

Other things goin' on

Certainly the building of the new Visitor's Center has taken a lot of attention lately, but there are other parts  of the farm that are moving right along as we enter the fall.

After nearly nine month's of pruning, leaf pulling, spraying, and shoot positioning, not to mention weed wacking, trellis repair, planting, and fertilizing, we are once again entering harvest season. If you thought that the day to day field work was exhausting, try picking and processing grapes. For our first harvest of the season, the picking of our Seyval Blanc grapes, we solicited the help of eighteen volunteers. Compared to last year when we had only six people cutting off the full bunches, we thought 18 was ample.

 But after an entire day of picking, beginning at 7 a.m. and going right through to 4 p.m., there were still 3+ rows to do. Five pickers returned the next day, tired bodies and hands all, to spend nearly another full day wrapping up less than an acre of white wine grapes.

And after picking into the bright yellow lugs, the grapes needed to be brought back and processed. Crushed, destemmed, and then sent through a bladder press, and ultimately moved to the stainless steel tanks where they sit for a day or two as we allow some of the solids to settle out prior to initiating fermentation.

The time and energy spent throughout the season had its rewards. We harvested 11,421 pounds of grapes which resulted in 2500 liters of liquid gold.

We still have six more varieties to pick. Though we expect great yields from our Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and our Norton, none will match that of the Seyval Blanc. Fortunately, these will be picked throughout the balance of August and well into September, as we let the Brix levels rise in the absence of rain, but with plenty of sunlight to enrichen the flesh of the grape. Our Scuppernongs are not likely to be fully picked until sometime in October.

There are other parts of the farm too. We expect 2 new calves to be born in the third week of September, and though they will most likely be drinking their mother's milk for a half dozen months or so, we need to consider making sure they have enough raw food to get them through the winter. This year we harvested the front field of its Fall Panicum grasses, getting it cut, teddered and roll baled for feeding to begin in and around December.

Being Framed - Building the Winery: Part 14

Wow, am I behind the eight ball. This past week has been 100% harvest, and while we're picking grapes the building has absolutely taken off. This is what 12 guys (and 1 gal) can do in 3 days. A day of laying out the walls, a couple of days putting up the outside framework, and then all of a sudden the plans move from being 2-dimensional to something where one can actually picture what  the finished product would look like.

The weather down here has been great for both builders and grape growers. Sunny, with the occasional cloudy day, and nearly no rain. 

The 7 openings you see in the front are for carriage doors, since this will be a giant-sized carriage house when it is completed. The first owner of our home was Harry Spratley ("I'm just wild about Harry, and Harry's just wild about me" fame), who spent his life partying it up and raising carriage horses for the NYC carriage trade. The new building was inspired by the farm's original purpose. 

As for picking, our first harvest in 2015 was Seyval Blanc. Where on a mere .8 acres we pulled in 5 & 3/4 tons of grapes. It was our largest crew ever, with 18 people taking part in the 2-day picking event.For this white grape we needed to make multiple 11 mile trips from the vineyard to the winery because we were picking faster than we could process and we needed to recycle our yellow lugs faster. All of these grapes resulted in 2500 liters of wine juice, after they were destemmed,crushed, and pressed.

Two days later we picked our Viognier. From a poor showing of 180 pounds last year, we pulled in nearly ten times that this year, primarily due to the added attention to pruning methods and being  a recovery year after we had a bad disease problem in 2013.

It is up to the winemaker to tell us what is next, but I suspect after pulling our whites, the reds will start taking center stage for future pickings. It is a combination of Brix, acid, potential for disease, and weather that determines when we pick.   Based on our weekly readings, I think the Petit Verdot are next in line.

Sand and Gravel: Building the Winery: Part 13

As I look out my window, I barely see the progress made this week. Not that there was little progress....there are just trees in the way of a full panoramic view of the new building. This past weekend was devoted to catching up after a gross engineering error, and it seemed like everyone was spinning in place as the otherwise well orchestrated plan took an unexpected twist.

The concrete guys came in and spent an entire week laying down sand. A pressure test on a buried water line blew, so that had to be excavated and repaired. Platforms had to be built for concrete pads which will hold 3 air conditioning units, along with a humongous transformer. Maybe a generator will slide into a spot here too. And then there were the yards and yards (or is it tons and tons?) of gravel that was brought in and tamped down.

I found out why they didn't just throw all the broken cinder blocks from the "bad wall" into the center to just be poured over. Turns out that if one of these block pieces happens to be thrown over a buried piece of PVC, it might rupture the piping when the additional weight of the slab is put over it. Actually makes sense.

On Friday the metal weave and rebar was put in place in preparation for the slab. It will take 2 days to drop that much concrete in place.

JUMPING FORWARD A WEEK......

As you can see the slab has been laid down. They did the major portion in one day, and used a 2nd day to do all the pads and steps that are around the parameter. It was a lot more work than just having a cement truck back up and drop the many loads. Four guys riding around on machines that sort of resembled those swamp air boats you see in the Everglades, evening out the slab to align with the outer walls. Another 4 guys troweling edges and cleaning up around all the piping that was sticking out. For the most part, it was completely set by the end of the day, before they actually left the site. The framing is next. The building is beginning to take shape and allow one to better visualize the 6000+ square feet of the completed Visitor's Center.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS GOING TO BE ?

"Whoops" - Building the Winery: Part 12

Whoops is not a word you want to hear from your surgeon or dentist. It also isn't one you want to hear from your builder. This past week things were just cranking along. All the underground work was underway, and a sharp subcontractor found a problem; one that needed to be corrected, not just worked around.

One of his placements was to put floor drains in the bottle-barrel room. Two drains in all.....1/3 back from thee rear wall, 1/3 forward from the front wall. When they finished the plumbers saw that the middle third was a lot bigger than the two other segments. I don't think they used the word: "Whoops". Sounds too prissy in the building trade. Expletives are in order, and fortunately in this case they weren't self-directed.

The site supervisor was called over, and he took out his giant sized tape measure and started to measure all the obvious things, starting with the front to back measurement of the wall locations. The rear wall, all 110' of it, was off by 4'. Though a "Do Over" was an easy answer, some effort was made to see if the design could be altered to accommodate this error. Unfortunately, trusses couldn't be changed and roof lines couldn't be altered without significant costs being added or structural integrity being compromised.

The error was identified....miss reading the specs. on the blueprint by the Degree-certified engineers that staked out the job. Determining who was responsible (and who will pay for the repair work) was easy; now urgent scheduling of cement trucks, concrete contractors, and masons had to be entered back into the work load immediately to try to remain on schedule with all the subsequent work that was already tightly planned. What a mess.

 The masons worked both Saturday and Sunday on this. Two new walls had to be built. The fireplace, that had been centrally located, was severely out of skew and needed to be rebuilt. Brick counts were off and the Supervisor had to race off to pick up more bricks and mortar....fortunately the supply house was open till noon on Saturday.

It had rained heavily shortly after the new ditches were dug. Our good luck with the weather had finally run out and the site looked like Amsterdam with all the new "waterways" holding the water. Nicely dug building pads had to be ripped up and dis-functional walls had to be slotted open to allow this water to drain off. Some pools of water still remained however and the masons had to adjust their mortar mix so it wouldn't dissolve in place while they laid their brick. They tried very hard to make order out of chaos.

And when they were done, the old wall still has to be dismantled and moved. What do you do with 382  cinder blocks, some broken, some not, with dried mortar hanging from all the edges?

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS GOING TO BE ?

Ditches and Pipes - Building the Winery: Part 11

The site has been fairly busy this week, but in a few short weeks all the work that is being done right now will be invisible. The slab will be poured soon, but before it is one must put all the feed piping in that will connect surface drains or allow feeds of wire through for all the above ground connections to be made later. It is a strong testament to these subcontractors who "somehow know" where the walls are going to be built, and make sure these lines are placed exactly right so the specs. can be accurately followed on placements of toilets and sinks, floor drains and electrical power.

It is a jungle of PVC pipe....white for the plumbers, grey for the electricians, working their way through hand cut ditches. The pipe is buried under just a few inches of soil now, but when the slab is set there will be 12" to 18" of sand, gravel, and concrete over the tops of them. There will be no going back to tweak their location. The sub's reputation is at risk. Nothing worse than a framer pointing out to the G.C. that what's his name didn't have a clue, and a change order is required to move a wall or position. 

In the meantime, working within the same parameter walls, another crew is putting in the framework to pour a center stemwall.....a wall going  down the center which will hold the weight of the center of the building. Fluorescent shirts seem to be the rage in the building trades as you can see. Piping had already been placed allowing for feeds from the front to the back of the building. 

We have been lucky so far in regards to the weather. Any rains we have received have been only light ones; none of which have affected the schedule. 

Over in the vineyards the work is hurried as we try to get everything ready for harvest. The grapes are rapidly changing color which is a sign that harvest is just around the corner. Diane has measured the BRIX twice so far, and with a BRIX on the Seyval Blanc approaching 16, it signals picking to be in about 3 weeks. But as mentioned in prior blog entries, late season fungus might accelerate our harvest plans, and a heavy rain might dilute these readings and set us back some. Last season we starting picking August 18th, so we aren't far off from this. 

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS IS GOING TO BE?

"Forever Young" - Building the Winery: Part 10

The last four days have been horribly hot. The days may start out a comfortable 72 degrees, but by mid-morning the humidity starts to take its toll as the thermometer climbs up into the 90's. Any one who works outside needs to do their duty before noon, or the hot climate will start to eat away at you and whatever energy you think you have in reserve.

My day has been starting right around 5 a.m. I know because that is when our rooster decides it will let the world know it is alive and well. Being a light sleeper, I hear this blasted animal regardless of how tired I am or if my head is buried beneath a pillow. But I know I can't see anything outside yet, so the gradual attempt at waking up is the norm. Cereal. Juice. A stiff cup of coffee (or 2). I throw my clothes on, knowing they will be drenched by the humidity, my perspiration, and kneeling down in the grasses still wet from the morning dew.

My body is in automatic now. I have pre-cut the trellis ties I use, placing them in my work apron along with my pruning shears. My short walk takes me from the front of the house to row 44. I have been pruning these Scuppernongs now for near half a month, and in the last couple of days I have been knocking out 2 rows a day (i.e. 5 to 6 hours) because I can sense getting to the end after 21 rows and because Rich has shamed me into completing the job while he is working the other field.

Scuppernongs are a maze of nature. A cultivar of muscadine, left alone they will grow in a zillion directions. Though they had been pruned once early in the season, they now are in a state of complete mayhem. The good news is that they probably have a full 2 month's of growth left before we harvest them, so the pruning will help in their development and even more growth. For those unfamiliar with Scuppernongs, they are a native variety of grape, growing from northern Florida up the east coast to parts of Virginia. They do not have the "normal" bunches you envision grapes to have......they are in small clusters of 5 or 6 or 7. The grapes are the size of golf balls, with a thick outer skin and a very sweet flesh. When you start pruning they are a glob of green leaves, but when the pruning is complete, a structure is made which resembles a grape hedge, with shoots going vertical both upwards and downwards. They grow so well here that I allow 12' of expansion in each direction of the trellis.

This one vine took nearly a half hour to shape.

As I am pruning this vine, in the background Rod Stewart is singing "Forever Young". If you know those 2 words, you have mastered 80% of the song. The masonry crew is on site, recognizing the heat index could only slow them down. The head mason is an older guy, and on the weekend he has the radio blasting from his truck. It is a compilation of 70's and 80's music. Clapton. Steeley Dan. Fleetwood Mac. No hip hop and surprisingly no country. But today it seemed like an endless loop of "Forever Young". It makes you crazy. You are doing basically the same thing over and over and this song gets stuck in your head, long after the radio station has moved to the next jingle. It's over and over again. Please give me a new tune to replace this one ! Another one never comes and the only way I can escape it is complete my rows for the day and go inside where it is much much cooler.

The brick layers did a splendid job in their 4 days on the job. They layered concrete blocks 3 high all around the foundation, attached with mortar on top of the "mud" layer from the prior day's pouring.

The view here is looking east. The vineyard is on the left, while our house is located just beyond the trees in the upper right. The rectangle in the lower right is for our Function Room with a fireplace, while the bigger rectangle will house the main part of the building, including the tasting room and bottle-barrel room. 

WHAT IS THIS GOING TO BE ?

From the Ground Up - Building the Winery: Part 9

With the well being put on hold temporarily, the next big "Action Item" is putting in the foundation. Unlike up North, where nearly every building has a basement, footer foundations and poured slabs seem to be the norm here. It is probably just as well, after you took a look at the high water table in my previous post.

It may lack excitement to most readers, but after nearly two years of fighting to get this far, to see some earth being moved around and some concrete poured is pretty exciting stuff.

After some flagging, a concrete firm came in and dug a trench all around the parameter of the building footprint which was about 18" wide x 36" deep. In this gravel was placed, and then nearly a day's worth of setting in re-bar. Laser sensors are now used to place "sight rods" which indicate exactly how high the concrete is to be poured in and leveled off. And then the true exhibition took place. The site supervisor had his directorial debut, where 3 different companies came in to perform "Act One" of the foundation project.  It started with a brand spanking new half-million dollar truck with this extraordinarily long boom on it which pumped concrete and shot it into the trough that had been dug. The operator used a hand-held control box as he directed the boom and nozzle into the ditch, slowly shooting the concrete around into the new walls. On one side of him the concrete workers hand leveled the paste, while the traditional cement truck backed up to the pumper and shot it's barrel-rotated mixture into the pumper to keep it primed.

It was an all day project which required 2 1/2 cement trucks to provide all the cement that was needed. It only needs a couple days to set before the masonry guys can come in to start the brick work....






WHAT IS THIS GOING TO BE ?

We have a side project going on too. I'll just be putting up pictures as it moves along in unison with the new winery building. If you have an idea as to what it is going to be, send your guess to my email address: DSheldon23883@gmail.com
If you already know, please don't post it yet; it'll be interesting to see the varied input which I will share in subsequent posts.

All Is Well - Building The Winery: Part 8

My blog entries have been rather quiet lately, but the vineyard activity has followed its typical (if there is such a thing) routine. We  had a fairly good harvest last year, and with that success we feel compelled to try to beat it this year.

My son Rich has joined us full time, primarily working the vineyard over at Bacon's Castle, while I am left to tend to the newer vineyard that is right in front of our house. He certainly has more vines to tend to, mostly established vines on about 6 acres. My vines are newer covering 4 acres. In fact, of those I am watching over, we planted 1475 Malbecs just this past April to replace nearly the same number that didn't survive an insect onslaught.

But the real news is that after nearly 2 years, we finally wrestled down our financing for the new Visitor's Center and will continue the building effort until completion, scheduled for sometime in late fall. Hopefully I will be more active with the blog, but for those that want to follow us via Facebook, check out Hampton Roads Winery.

We had to change builders during this process, which was no easy task. And the ordeal with the Bank had its own fair share of grief which would have killed weaker men. It is one of those memories I care not describe without an evening's supply of wine to complement the story. We are now off to the races, as they say, and the first step occurred this past week with the well guy driving on the lawn and starting to make an exploratory pit prior to drilling.

His enthusiasm had to be dampened however, for after I went out to poke my nose into his business, I found out that he didn't have a permit to drill a Class 2B well , which is required for an operation which is expected to have the general public involved. I had to pull in some favors, but the very next day we had a State Inspector out to view the site and make recommendations. The downside is that getting a bureaucracy involved  takes time, so our permit won't arrive till probably later this week. So right now I am looking at this hole that has filled with water. A visual tells you how high our water table is.....within 12" of the top surface. Yikes ! You would think the earth would move just by walking on it.

This week we should also start to see some foundation work being done. All this will be on the building pad we had put in last October & November. Seems like ages ago.

With only 4 months to Grand Opening, there is soooo much to do. As I work through the largest To Do list one has ever seen, of course not alone but with the help of Diane and Rich, I'll keep you posted.

The Underground - Building the Winery: Part 7

Sometimes what you don't see can be very important. No, I'm not talking about the septic system which managed to rear its ugly head by having 7 silos pop above ground over the holding tanks. I'm talking about electrical power.

Dominion Power has a program which analyzes neighborhoods, and particularly residences, to determine if there is a high chance of hurricane damage to the elevated power lines that are suspended up on the poles. The theory is that if they provide some preemptive action to these locations, they then can avert a potential electrical outage should a major storm pass through. Our winery / farm location was identified as one of these sources of potential trouble.

So one of their engineers approached me to discuss their program. Nice guy this "Steve" (whose last name will be omitted to protect his identity), who must have had some human resource training along with his years of practical knowledge about power lines. He said all the right things.....like "you won't have any trees taking down your power lines" (there was only one along 800' of line), to "it'll remove an eyesore from your future winery view" to "we can do it all without destroying your lawn".

This has apparently been a program going on for some time. It just shows you that there must be some extra money in the till for them to worry about the future like this. In further discussions with Steve, he shared with me a common attitude that this program allows Dominion Power to be in control of an ever-increasing amount of real estate, for to have them come in and bury power lines, they require a right-of-way that measures some 15' wide for the length of the line. You do this often enough, they tend to become a major land-owner in the State, though technically they don't own the land, but they do control it.

For the most part I didn't have to give up too many rights regarding the parcel sectioned off. Yes, I can still put a fence over the top of it. I just can't put a shed or something that might be considered a permanent structure that might hinder future repairs over the line. But that's the trade-off, isn't it? And let's be honest, where the line is being dropped it wasn't really in a touchy part of the property. It managed to follow along one side of the property line, much like an "Invisible Fence" might.

For those that think a Ditch Witch is just a piece of machinery you rent at Home Depot, you must expand your understanding. Ditch Witch is a company and a brand name that includes all sorts of earth construction equipment. The one that was used on our project was a Model JT2020 Directional Drill (seen above). Using an 85 hp engine, it rotated and push-drilled lengths of pipe, I'm guessing maybe 2 1/2" in diameter x 10' long, into the ground  to a depth of 4'. At the forward end of the lead pipe there was a deflector of sorts that the operator could maneuver back at the control box that would allow it to steer up or down, left or right. With an electronic guidance system that sort of resembles a parking meter, another operator would hold it upright a hundred feet or so away to determine the "flight path" of the underground piping. The guidance system would send radio waves into the ground that the main control panel would pick up on and allow for a directional adjustment.

Once the pipe popped out into a previously dug splicing pit, a roll of wire would be attached and the pipe would then be pulled back into the rig. This particular directional drill machine held 300' of piping that had a pulling power of 20,000 pounds in order to return the pipe to its docking carriage and yank the wire through the 300' cavity.

All in all, it took a crew of four an entire day to perform this task, and nearly a day for a 3-truck Dominion crew to detach the above-ground wires, hook-up the feeds to a new pad transformer , remove the old poles, and  clean up the site.

All did a great job. They barely left a trace other than a picket fence that had to be put back in place; oh, I had to reset all the blinking alarm clocks in the house too.