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Spruce Lodge Foundation Project - Phase 1

This is the first digital pictorial chronicle of the largest tangible project the Powell family has yet initiated.

Porch Demolition

For milennia, in the northern spruce and maple forests of the Adirondacks, a duff of leaves and evergreen needles has collected beneath the forest canopy. Water from abundant rain and snow melt soaks into and through the thick layer of duff, flowing slowly down, over PreCambrian Canadian Shield granite bedrock polished smooth by a series of mile thick continental glaciers, and through pockets of sand and gravel finely ground and left by those same glaciers.

A seeping spring, just up the hill, feeds a trickle of water that has flowed beneath our camp for decades. Tons of foundation rock resting in a slurry of saturated sand over a smooth granite slope does not move quickly. But it does move.

Under the influence of fluid pressure and gravity, the entire hillside is moving down (oh, so slowly) toward the lake. With it, our camp has participated sedately in the process of erosion. Unfortunately, the house does not move as a coherent unit and differential motion has undesirable effects.

Most notably, the living room fireplace was inexorably taking the northwest corner of the house along on a slow promenade toward the lakeshore. As a result, we decided to act.

A project, to stabilize the fireplace and replace a crumbling section of the stone rubble and mortar foundation, necessitated removal of a large portion of a LARGE porch that was itself in dire need of rebuilding. Relocation of most of the electrical wiring and plumbing lines in the area of the porch and living room was also necessary.

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