The Edmisten Farm ~ A Thanks Given Story ~ Part 1

Thanksgiving is a time of family, food, heritage, and tradition. Many folks make time to travel to the old home place. The old home place, the farm, and the heritage of the valley that has become our new campus will be the stories that will unfold over the next few days. This is Part 1.

Readers and community members will remember that a large portion of our campus was know as the Edmisten property. This was their family farm.

I had the opportunity to visit with Joe Edmisten and his sister Betty Edmisten Church earlier this fall. Joe told me some wonderful history, shared great stories, his writings, photos, and also gave me this 195o's era aerial photo. It is the oldest aerial I have seen of the Perkinsville Valley.

In the photo below you can orient to the location and the time. Bisecting the center of the photo is Old 421. Near the upper right corner you will notice a circular drive and open field. That is Mountlawn Memorial Gardens just after it was created as a cemetery for Boone.

Perkinsville was truly the outskirts of Boone. If you click to enlarge this photo you might be able to recognize many other features from the fifties.

If you follow Old 421 to the left or West your will see how little development there is along that part of town. The road making a right angle on the left off of 421 is Highway 194. Not too far up that road is Perkinsville Baptist Church. You will notice there is no Hardin Park school, no Newmarket Shopping Center, no Hardees or Wilco at that major intersection. The small store at the intersection was Jones Minute Mart.

But back to the Edmisten farm. I have zoomed in and cropped down to the major portion of the farm. The farm house, barn, and family garden are on the left side of this photo.

This zoom takes you in on the family cemetery. If you want to orient to the current campus, our Webcam view is from the edge of that plot.

The photo above gives a better orientation to the size and location of the original Edmisten Family Farm on our campus.

The home and working farm are on the left or west side of the property.

Now that you know where the Edmistens were, we will begin to explore what it was like to live on this farm by the New River in Perkinsville Valley. I hope you enjoy this Thanksgiving journey over the river and through the woods to the Edmisten Farm.

Deep Winter before December

BRRRRR ~~~~~

14 degrees and winds howling, gusting up to 45mph through our site on Friday the 21st made the worst working conditions of the year so far.
That said, the project continues to move forward ahead of schedule. Much of the exterior masonry is in place on the classroom wings. Some of our roof is being finished. Drywall should begin in 3 to 4 weeks. That will be a milestone. Winter came early, but at least our construction crews will be working indoors soon!
I was looking at the live broadcast real time webcam during this blast of winter. Which, by the way is a good way to check actual current weather conditions in the greater "Perkinsville Valley" and East Boone .

Click here for live feed

The camera would rock and sway on the pole when the big gusts would rip through at 30-45 mph blasts. I could only imagine what it must feel like to be working on the site in those conditions! This is the view looking from Old 421 down our driveway and entrance. In spite of the weather today, the project is 33% complete and we are now 54 days ahead. Isn't this great news!

Early Morning Light

Some mornings when I am driving in to school I stop by the main entrance and check out the progress of our new school. I love the morning light in this valley. Complemented with the fall color, this is going to be a beautiful campus.
The next photo is taken directly from our driveway. If you go up old 421 in front of the Wilco Hess station headed east you will see our driveway about .5 mile on the right. It is directly across from Mountlawn Memorial Gardens. Pull over to the side and enjoy seeing the campus and our main building. This is the view from the top of our driveway. This photo is a stitched panorama that when you click to enlarge should allow you to look around inside of the school.

The viewer will notice the masonry work on the wing on the right side. I love the colors we have chosen. It is not a bright red brick, but a burn flashed darker brick. The split face CMU is also a warm earth tone. Soon the exterior wall will be up and we will not be able to look inside. Another new feature to note is our roof finish! We debated long about what color the roof should be (Blue, Green, White?). I am really pleased to see how nice the Charcoal Gray looks and how it harmonizes with our masonry.

Behind those columns (which are along the front walkway) you will see an open space with a strong diagonal shadow. That is the inside of our Theater! To the left you can see the two tiered balcony. Our theater house will have a 6% rake and a raised stage will be on the right in this photo. BTW Pioneer Playmakers are at State Competitions this week, "break a leg"!In this photo, the morning light shows our roof design very nicely.

For the Art of the Photograph:

The next photo is shared simply for the beauty of the form and composition of the image. I love the curves and angles, verticals and textures, light and shadow of this photo.

Sometimes it is worth taking a minute to reflect upon the beauty that can be found in the moment. It is at these times I can imagine the future in our new school. I so hope I get to teach in our new WHS.

If you haven't driven by the site recently, go be inspired. :-)

New Aerial Photos for October

This new photograph from SkySite Aerial is my most favorite of our campus posted so far. It was taken on October 23, 2008 on a flyover approaching from the East looking West. Notice the color in the trees!

It is autumn and in just 7 short months since construction truly began to commence we have a full campus design and the main building mostly under roof! According to Don Critcher, WCS Project coordinator,

we are currently 44 days ahead of schedule and we are at the 29% mark on completion!

Most of the masonry veneer has been completed on section 3 (seen on the left in photo above) and can be seen also from our main entrance on old 421. It looks great, I love our brick and split face masonry choice. As you can see above, roof underlayment has been completed in some areas and in the coming month you can look for the installation of our roof panels as well as the windows. This will really change the appearance of our building from the outside.

We are beginning the work on the retaining walls for the stadium and the auxiliary field. You can see the form of the stadium and track taking shape.

Below is an aerial shot approaching from the North looking South. Can you locate the features of our campus? Think about it before looking at the annotated picture coming up next :-)

Where are the tennis courts? Where will the field house be? How about bus parking and student drop off? And, which way to Boone?

Annotations and details are approximate by my best guess.

All aerial photo graphs are provided by

SkySite Aerial Photographs.
http://www.skysiteaerial.com/index.php

Geothermal Well Drilling

What is this machine and why is it floating up in the air?


That would be a super "wheelie" for such a low rider!

And indeed it is a low rider, down into the ground! This is a well drilling truck and machine. It is stabilized up off the ground as the drill does the work.

On the tail end is the business end of this machine. Notice the drill shaft doing the work below the truck operated by the machinist at the controls.

These drills are not drilling "for" water but rather, drilling a place to "put" water! These are our geothermal wells.

A number of people have asked about the many pipes sticking up out of the baseball field.

One even asked if that was going to be Pete's irrigation system! :-)

FYI: There will be fill added on top of these lines, and the irrigation lines will be above this system. The water for that will be supplied by the rainwater collection/gray water system.

These are our Geothermal well loops. It appears to be two pieces of pipe in each drilled well.
It is actually a loop, or one continuous piece that folds back along itself and is sunken into the drilled well.

The wells are drilled approximately 10 feet apart . Each well is 400+ feet deep and we will have around 250 of them under the baseball field.
At last count we were at about 114 completed and still drilling.

Each of these wells for a subterranean cavity and the looped piping will be filled with water which will be circulated back into our school. There is no water collected from these wells, they are just drilled holes. The water in the loops is a closed system which recirculates the liquid contained within them.

The workers below are welding the 12 inch tie-in or carry pipe that will deliver that geothermal warmed water back to our school.
Each of the loops out of the wells tie into these two main lines at the edge of the baseball field and cross under our driveway, one line in, one line back out.

As shown in the photo below, these lines then enter our school and tie into our HVAC system with water supplied at a constant temperate level.

Thus saving some of the energy it takes to heat and adding to the sustainability and green features of our new school. This is one of the LEED components we have incorporated to achieve LEEDS certification.

Working Together ~ the Webcam project

A little history on one of the successful sidebar stories of our new school project is the Webcam we now have up and running on our campus. (See the link in the sidebar to the right of this post to access the webcam view.)

The idea to put a webcam on the site so anyone at anytime could check in on the progress of our construction began in February of 2008. (The same month this blog was begun and our project went out to bid).

This initiative originated within the Core team discussions. After arranging funding from various sources, researching the best design solution and equipment, and finding the knowledgeable experts in the field to help us this collaboration has come together.



With the expert assistance provided by Brian W. Raichle, of ASU's Appropriate Technology program and his students the equipment was assembled and hand installed on site.

In this photo the ASU students are bringing the photovoltaic panels onto the site.
James Story from the Watauga County Schools maintenance staff assisted us in the lift bucket. His practical, problem solving approach to the mechanical and electrical installation was tremendously helpful.
Here James is attaching the framing support for the solar panels.
ASU students and teacher discuss the installation process.

Our webcam is solar powered and sustainable. It has three major mechanical components: The photovoltaic panels
and the batteries
and the camera.

Shown in the photo above (with James Storie in the bucket) are the other two key players in the solution to the many issues of installation and operation we encountered. Brian Raichle and Shannon Carroll.

Brian Raichle of ASU, who with his physics background, his understanding of photovoltaic systems, and "stick with it" attitude provided the working knowledge of the equipment.

Brian "gets" appropriate technology and sustainable future systems.

The dedication of Shannon Carroll of WHS Technology who understands networking and wireless technology, who did the research and found the hardware, then studied and applied the software necessary to make this work was decidedly the MVP on this team.
Here Shannon contemplates one of the recurring issues we had with solving the wireless communication between our camera and the on site technology that allows you the viewer to visit our campus via the internet in your own home.

We also wish to thank our architectural firm, sfla, for their partial donation toward the purchase of our camera.

Mike Kesterson of Barnhill/Vannoy is providing the internet connection that makes the live feed accessible via the Internet. Keith Dillon has helped get the antenna installed and set up on the home base. Thanks!

To me this has been simply an amazing technology, process, and value that demonstrates the "future thinking" and 21st Century Skills that we will carry forward into our new high school.

September 29 Aerial views

These are the newest aerial photos of our campus.

View the first aerial shots (click here)

Follow the link below to go to an aerial photo by Hugh Morton

of the old "New WHS".

click here to view

These photos below were taken on September 29. (Readers may recall I anticipated the main building would be under roof by the end of September).

The photo above is approaching from the east By zooming in you can clearly see the final design of our main building.
From the opposite direction flying in from the west.
This it nearly directly overhead and clearly shows the variety of roofing elements. You might be able to discern the four different layers on the middle wing, area 2. You can also see some of the masonry work and the open stair well at the end of area 3, which is the short classroom wing on the left.
This view is approaching from the north. Our entrance driveway is at the bottom of the picture and ties into old 421. The baseball field is directly to the left of the driveway and the softball field to the left of that. The pattern or rows of gray and black on the baseball field are the geothermal wells that are being drilled. We are approximately half finished with the well drilling.

Watauga High School SkySite Aerial Photography - Charlie Sarratt info@skysiteaerial.com

First Team on the Field gets to Play

An observant reader from the last post (October 2) noticed that out one of the windows it appeared there were players on the stadium field and wondered if we were already practicing on the new field! ;-)
Yes indeed, there was a group playing on the field. These players are construction workers. I believe this was the plumbing crew and the masonry crew. This was taken after hours at the end of the day after a full day on the job.
Our construction manager, Mike Kesterson, explained that on a project this size with hundreds of workers the construction crews actually become a small community. He was asked if the crews could play ball on the field at the end of the day. On one evening a week they get together and enjoy the competition and exercise on our field.
As Mike said, it is important to provide opportunity for all of the construction community to "own" their product. When the workers feel respected and encouraged to work together as a team a sense of pride in the work and a sense of ownership in the product is created. This diverse and complex organization of individuals have come together to create our school.

It is for their future as well as ours that we build our new school and campus.