December 19, 2001
The first three cabins opened for Scouts on December 7th. These cabins and their associated latrine comprise the Adelaide Ward Cabin Cluster. The Campmaster Building also opened the same weekend. Six troops have since enjoyed staying at the new facilities. Progress on the remaining cabins is very good with all of them close to being ready to open. The only concern is over a need to redesign two septic fields. We are awaiting Health Department approval on the redesign and hope to have the fields in before the ground freezes. We do expect at least five cabins open for the winter with a good possibility of all nine being open by mid-January.

October 2, 2001
Quite a bit has been completed in the last month. Three of the four wells have been drilled and pits have been excavated for the pressure tanks and disinfect ion systems. Oak, Birch, and Maple cabins have received siding as well as insulation above the ceilings and heavy duty sheetrock on the ceilings. Insulation has also been installed under these floors as well as the Campmaster floor and plywood nailed in place to seal the bottom of the buildings. The composting tanks have been placed in the three cluster latrines and the latrine in the Hardwoods has the siding and lower wall in the back completed. Most of the cabins have both the electric and plumbing roughed in.

Excavation for all water, septic and electric lines in the clusters is just about complete and work is now proceeding on the septic fields. The tanks have been installed and pipe is about to be laid for the fields.

September 4, 2001
Most of the cabins and latrines have had Tyvek house wrap, windows and doors installed. The Campmaster Building received trusses, roof sheathing, a metal roof, windows doors and siding. The plumbing and electric trenches in the Hardwoods cluster and at the Campmaster Cabin were backfilled. The latrine in the Softwoods cluster was erected.

August 22, 2001
The trusses and roof were added to the latrine in the Woodlands Cluster. The floor supports, floor decking, walls, trusses and roof sheathing were all built for the Black Bear Cabin. The metal roofing on the Oak cabin was completed and roofing begun on Cedar. The Birch Cabin received Tyvek house wrap, windows and doors. Electrical work continued as did trenching for water and electric lines and roughing in the plumbing in the buildings.

August 13, 2001
This past week the plywood sheathing was completed on Hawk. Trenching was begun in the Hardwoods Cluster and around the Campmaster Building. Electric and water will go in one trench and septic in another. The Hardwoods latrine roof sheathing was completed and a metal roof installed. The Campmaster Building deck, floor and walls were constructed as were the deck, walls, trusses and roof of the Hemlock Cabin in site 4. Finally, Oak Cabin had a metal roof installed on one side and the roof prepped for metal on the other side.

August 6, 2001
The roofers have almost completed their work on the Maple cabin, which is the cabin in the rear of site 1. The porch on Oak was constructed and the walls went up on Hawk as well as the trusses and some sheathing. The floor and walls for the site 1 (Hardwoods Cluster) privy also were constructed.

July 30, 2001
Six of the cabins now have plywood on the roof. The porches have been constructed on two. The roofer is set up with his equipment and about to begin. The electrician has begun roughing out the first cabin. Concrete forms have gone up for the two cabins with retaining walls and the lower walls of the four latrines. All of this concrete has been poured and forms removed. The tanks for two of the septic fields have been put in place. The Campmaster building area has been prepared and all of the piers have been formed and poured.

July 17, 2001
Quite a bit has been accomplished since the last update. The main camp road is complete. It is now at least twenty-one feet wide and in many places is substantially more. The cabins are now proceeding at a rapid pace with a total of four of them having progressed to where they are roofed in with plywood and a fifth with the plywood about half completed. Work on the latrines will begin next week as will work on plumbing, electric and roofing.

June 25, 2001
The framers started this past week on two cabins. Their efforts were delayed by rain, but one cabin in the old site 1 is completely decked with a wall up and the second one is partially framed. Concrete work continues in the third cluster.

The entire main road has now received a coating of about eight inches of item 4. The challenge for the week was tractor trailers with thirty tons of road material getting stuck on the first hill in camp due to all of the rain. A bulldozer and chain makes short work of the problem. The final grading of the main road is now underway.

June 18, 2001
Cabin construction this past week involved continuing to work on pouring concrete for sonotubes and footings. Six cabins and two latrines now have all of the footing and pier concrete complete. A large amount of building supplies arrived in camp including the bulk of the Campmaster Building and latrine parts from Lincoln Logs.

Yonkers Excavating spent the week spreading the final coat of road material on the main road. They had twenty-one tractor trailers of material arriving each day. A little more than half of the road is completed with the item 4.

June 9, 2001
The cabin construction this past week was continued work on the cabin foundations with concrete footings and piers being formed and poured for much of the second cluster of cabins. Several storage trailers were delivered as was an office trailer. Materials are received almost every day.

Progress on the main camp road was limited due to a problem with delivery of road material. The road was graded for a final time prior to putting down the item 4.

A large stump grinder was delivered on Thursday. All of the stumps have been ground and the result is a mountain of wood chips which will be removed from the area.

June 2, 2001
Yonkers Excavating spent the week completing drainage projects, particularly on the hill north of site 5. They also cut the road edges to provide for proper water runoff and cleaned up the old culverts. On Friday they picked up a bulldozer and roller which will be used for spreading the final road material, item 4.

Valor Construction continued prep work on piers and footings. They poured concrete three days this week. One cabin site has been backfilled and is ready for framing the floor.

May 26, 2001
Rain has been a major impediment to the construction of the cabins. On Monday, more rebar was pinned to rock in preparation for pouring concrete. Tuesday through Thursday it rained and only some preparation work that could be done under cover was completed. The two pieces of septic piping that will cross the road were also laid under the road. On Friday the crew began placing forms for the retaining walls.

The rain did not have the same effect on Yonkers Excavating as much of their work was in machines. They spread almost all of the rip-rap around culvert entrances and exits and worked on putting catch basins in the hill north of site 5. Unfortunately almost all of the area to be trenched for the drainage on that hill is solid rock. The rock hammer has been used most of the week in this area to complete the widening of the road and digging the trench.

May 22, 2001
Valor Construction excavated all of the foundation holes for the second cluster of cabins and completed the parking area excavations. On Friday they began the process of drilling the rock in the foundations and pinning rebar rods to it for the piers.

Yonkers Excavation ran the rock hammer all week and will continue with it this week. Much of the rock removal is completed and rip-rap is being laid on the lower end of the culverts.

May 14, 2001
Yonkers Excavating completed all of the culvert work and placed large boulders along the side of the road in several places to serve as guard posts. The rock hammer is in and will be used this coming week.

Concrete has not been poured in the sites yet. The parking areas for each cluster were excavated and all of the cabins sites have been laid out.

May 7, 2001
Valor Construction has completed the cabin layout for the first two clusters to be built. In addition, they have dug the holes for the piers and retaining walls for the first three cabins. The hole for pouring the foundation for the first latrine has also been prepared. Forms will go in this week and concrete should be poured the end of this week or the beginning of the next week.

Yonkers Excavating spent the week on culverts. Almost all of them are in including the large one at the bottom of the Kiah driveway and the thirty-six inch culvert at the camp entrance. The rock hammer should be in by the end of this week to begin working on the relatively few pieces of ledge in the widened road.

J&J Log and Lumber Corp. came in and began picking up the logs from the trees we cut to prepare the cabin areas and the road. The funds derived from selling the logs will be used toward the entire project.

April 28, 2001
Valor construction completed pulling all the stumps in the sites and began laying out the exact outline and elevations for the cabins. The roads within the cabin sites have been roughed out.

Yonkers Excavation completed cutting the width of the main road and spent several days installing culverts. They have completed eight and cut the top off of several hills.

April 21, 2001
The road contractor completed moving all of the road stumps to a central area for disposal. They also cut and filled the edges of the road to its final width from the camp entrance to site 5. Today they laid out all of the pipe for the new culverts. Next week they should finish cutting the road width and begin installing culverts.

The site contractor continued to pull stumps in the three cabin clusters and three septic fields. The roads in the first site to be worked on were also roughed out. They will have several more days of pulling stumps. They also began to shoot their elevations in order to begin concrete footings for three cabins soon.

April 13, 2001
Yonkers Excavating pulled all the tree stumps on the main road this week. In addition they widened the turn north of site 5 until they hit a relatively small piece of ledge which will need the attention of a rock hammer. They cut down and widened the road just south of site 8 also running into a small piece of ledge. At they end of the week they skidded trees for the volunteers working on the final (we hope) trees to be cut and also completed the staking of the road edges.

The General Contractor who is working on the sites set his silt fence this week and spent several days digging out stumps. There are a lot more stumps to pull early next week.

April 6, 2001
The road contractor, Yonkers Excavating Corp., began work on Monday, April 2nd. On Monday and Tuesday they installed all the silt fence that will be needed for the road portion of the construction. This was inspected by the Town of Putnam Valley on Wednesday and was satisfactory. Wednesday and Thursday were spent preparing the "construction entrance" to the property. Eight inches of road material was scraped from the entrances and that portion of the road was also widened. On Friday two hundred yards of one and a half inch rock was delivered, spread and tamped down on the entrances. The contractor also began removing stumps along the main road.

April 3, 2001
Work on the improvement and widening of the main road began on Monday, April 2nd. The contractor for the cabins sites will begin on Monday, April 9th. The first step for both contractors is to install silt fence and then pull tree stumps. This page will now be updated every Friday with information and pictures.

March 12, 2001
Winter will not subside! A contractors meeting was held at Clear Lake on Thursday March 8th . After looking at the still frozen ground and the fifteen inches or more of snow, the decision was reached to hold off on beginning construction until winter shows signs of ending, or April 2nd. Construction will begin by April 2nd regardless of conditions.

January 30, 2001
We received our construction permit from the Town of Putnam Valley. All paperwork is now complete to start construction on March 15.

January 25, 2001
After working for seventeen months, we have received final approval from the Putnam Valley Planning Board.  Based on conversations with the Town Building Inspector, we expect to receive our building permit in the next two weeks.  We continue to plan on starting construction by March 15th unless winter subsides dramatically.

January 11, 2001
The general contractor, the road contractor and the site-work sub contractor met with the architect and Steve Hammonds at Clear Lake on Tuesday, January 9th. Due to the depth of the frost in the ground, about 18 inches, it was agreed that it would be counter-productive to begin work in the near future. A target date of March 15th was set for project commencement. Work will begin with cutting two bad corners out of the main road and pulling stumps. Should we have an early spring, we will start sooner. It is expected that even with this delay, all cabins will be complete by September 1, 2001.

January 2, 2001
The Planning Board final review process has taken much longer than anticipated. We have received the comments from the Putnam Valley engineer and have handled all items he noted. We are awaiting final approval any day. In the meantime, we have submitted the building permit application and received a waiver for permit fee.

November 2, 2000
All trees have been cut to widen the road. In addition, trees have been cut for nine cabin sites as well as for the three cluster latrines, the campmaster cabin and its latrine, and the four septic fields. Well over 1,100 trees ranging from 4 inches in diameter to more than 28 inches in diameter have been cut down and cleaned up, all by volunteers.

Approvals from the Health Department have been received and we are now awaiting the final Planning Board approval, which should take a couple of weeks.