We have gotten our second estimate or preparing the land for building and it is much more reasonable. Sometimes things just have a way of working out and this newest development is further evidence of that. While we were up logging the land a neighbor of ours stopped down to have a chat. He mentioned the name of an independent contractor, S. E. Rodich Excavations, which did road work for the community and also some side jobs for residents. Well we took his advice and Rodich came back with an estimate that was one third the cost of the first! Needless to say we are going with him. 
We also happened to mention to this same neighbor that we had a lot of trees still to cut down and he mentioned that he was in desperate need of firewood. With more than enough wood on our property we struck up a deal. I recently returned from a fishing trip and visit to the property and was pleased to see that not only were the trees that we needed cut down gone but that a simple cleared driveway had been pushed in to help haul out the lumber. This drive is quite useful for us for moving supplies in and out and general access of the site. Things are looking up!

So we got our estimation back from the first excavation company and unfortunately they quadrupled our projections. I won't post their name but I found their prices beyond reason. The following is what we had required:

1. Clear and level a 50' x 50' area (tearing up stumps and moving to the side of the property)
2. Dig a 2' wide x 2' deep foundation trench in a 100' circumference circle
3. Put in a 10' x 20' gravel driveway.
4. Deliver 40 cubic yards of compactable soil and 18 cubic yards of stone.

As I previously wrote the land is rather sloped and that accounts for some of the cost. Also the delivery of that large an amount of soil and stone requires arrangements to be made for the large trucks to move onto the property. Still the cost of those materials was outrageous. Quality soil is generally around $20 - $30 a yard. Their cost was around $70. Stone is somewhere around $40 a yard around here. Their price was close to $122! We did not deal with this company on burying the rear of the cabin in the slope since this initial estimate came back so high. 

Unfortunately this highlights the cost of doing business in remote areas. There are less qualified companies available for labor and the delivery of common building materials can be expensive or impossible. We have another private contractor to get an estimate from on May 7th. We'll see what happens but since he is an individual rather than a company I expect a much cheaper quote. Also we are going to contract the soil and stone separately from the excavation. I post those results.

Last weekend three of us took a trip up to the land to do some cutting and clearing. We began with a densely wooded and overgrown patch and after two days of work ended up with a fairly clear 50' x 50' area. I say fairly clear due to the fact that a giant granddaddy of a triple trunk tree is left smack dab in the middle of the site. This monster must be 110'+ and it splits into what would be three fairly large size trees on their own You can see it in the picture above on the left side of the clearing. Obviously they have to come down but we just ran out of steam.
The plan is for a 30' diameter roundhouse, so 50' gives us about ten feet clear all around. The trouble with the piece of land we are working on is that it steadily slopes to the back of the property giving us very little working room. Regulations state that the building must be 100' from the road and we are currently at 90'. We therefore need to push the cabin back but are faced with some substantial sloping the further from the road we travel.
We are looking into two options right now to tackle this problem:

1. We spend the money to have an excavator build up and level the site toward the back.
2. We spend the money to have an excavator dig a semicircle down into the slope thereby burying the back of the cabin and leveling out to the front. I've made some models of this using Google Sketchup and Skitch for labeling.

Either way... we spend the money. Ugh! At this point though I'm hoping to go with option 2. This way we can leave the property behind the cabin still fairly natural and make the cabin less noticeable from the road. Also earth sheltering helps to moderate indoor temperatures due to the fact that the ground tends to remain a fairly constant temp a few feet below the surface. This helps even out heating and cooling requirements even more. The problem of course would be with managing the moisture but we've got a pretty solid plan of how to deal with that. If we decide to go this route I'll definitely do a post on it.