Ozark Retreat Page 3

  Curious, Brady monitored the operation, watching with interest as Henry worked the rig controls like a musician playing an instrument. It took most of two days of drilling to hit the best aquifer. Brady had to pay up. The well-produced eleven gallons a minute. Plenty for Brady’s needs.

  Henry was experienced with solar pumps and had everything needed to erect a fold-over pole with the solar array on it, and the controller and batteries for backup. Brady would do something else later, but Henry had a tip-up, insulated enclosure to cover the well head in the meantime. Samples of the water were sent in for tests.

  Brady found he liked camping out and stayed two extra days beyond what he originally planned to just enjoy being on the property. Before he left, Brady set up a motion activated surveillance camera just inside the tree line, aimed at the well site and camouflaged it. On the off chance someone discovered the well, pump, and solar array and vandalized or stole it, he’d have proof of it and probably the identity of the perpetrators. He had digital pictures of the installation for insurance purposes and would acquire coverage for the property when he got back to the city.

  He knew the next thing he needed to do was decide on the location of buildings and the number of people for which he needed to provide sewage treatment. But the work load was picking up and Brady put the decisions off for a few days. Barbara was looking for additional operatives. If he could get them, he had a big security contract in the bag and would branch out into that field.

  Barbara came through, as he knew she would and Brady took a team to the new business building under construction for which he would be providing security. The original architects had included security features, but Brady suggested a few changes. The owners weren’t too happy, but some of the changes actually saved some money. Overall, the changes resulted in only being slightly more expensive than the original plans. The owners were happy and Brady was happy. It would look good for advertising his services.

  Brady took another two weeks off and went back down to the property. He got the same wood cutters, powder monkey, and earthmoving contractor he’d used before to clear the area where he’d decided to put the septic system. He’d studied up on various waste treatment systems and knew what he wanted. It was a basic septic tank with leach field system.

  The plumbing contractor that he hired continued to tell Brady that the multi-trunk leach field was way over capacity for the tank capacity, according to the percolation test that had been done. Even for the larger than normal septic tank Brady had ordered.

  But Brady stood firm and the man installed it the way Brady wanted it. Brady had learned that you could clean out a tank, but could not effectively clean a leach field if it ever became saturated.

  He wanted the extra capacity for that reason and to allow for reduced evaporation in cases of extreme winter weather. In a properly installed leach field much of the liquid migrated upward through the ground, to be used by the plant life over the field, with another portion evaporating into the air. A significant amount was absorbed by the ground, but far from all of it, as most people thought. Including some plumbers.

  So Brady now had two of the most important basics on the property. Water and sewer. And the water had tested out pure and relatively soft. It wouldn’t need any treatment and tasted good.

  That was Brady’s last trip for a while. Winter set in and work demands kept Brady busy. But he wasn’t neglecting his new hobby. Preparedness. He was learning more and more, and buying preparations based on what he learned. Barbara had made sure the office was ready as it could be for whatever might come, be it natural or human caused. Brady approved everything and learned much from her examples.

  Over the winter, in the spare time he did have, Brady began to play with building designs and their placement on the model. By springtime, he had the basic plan for the entire property modeled out.

  He also took the advice of the gentleman at LaRhonda’s compound and had an engine swap done to the Suburban, as well as a few more modifications to make it a better ‘prepper’s’ rig.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The first chance he had, Brady went down, brought out the wood cutters, powder monkey, and the earthmovers again and cleared the rest of the areas he needed cleared to continue with his plans.

  One of the cleared areas was for a pond. It was just downhill from the spring. Brady talked to the extension agent and got the dimensions that would be acceptable for the less-than-a-gallon-a-minute spring to keep fresh. It wasn’t as large as Brady hoped for, but he wanted a live pond, not a dead one. He used a polymer liner, on top of a bentonite clay layer to insure the pond wouldn’t leak. The top soil was stockpiled separately from the sub-soil, for use later in building and landscaping.

  Near the pond, a freshly cleared and leveled area would be the orchard. Fortunately, the forest that had covered the property included several black walnut trees and uncounted hickory trees. All seemed to be heavy producers. A local nursery brought out the largest fruit and nut trees they had in stock to populate the orchard. It would be at least two to three years before the new trees began bearing, but Brady considered the expense of the more mature trees worth it, compared to less mature trees that would take five to seven years to produce.

  Three acres were cleared for gardens. Brady made arrangements with several local farms, as he located them, to either buy manure and used straw, or receive it for free to haul it off. It would all go on the garden plots for a couple of years to enrich the soil before anything was planted. One of the farmers was willing to go around, collect it, and deposit it on the garden for a small monthly fee. Brady also contracted with him to seed the pasture area that had been cleared.

  Brady also had large beds of ever bearing strawberries put in. And blackberries. The thorny type. Brady had sets placed all around the perimeters of each of the cleared areas. More would be added each year until he had a solid ring around each area, except for specific, necessary openings.

  That was the springtime project. The summer project began in July.

  Brady bought another solar pump setup identical to the one for the well. It was placed in the pond and a line run to the garden and one to the orchard. The nursery crew came back out and installed an irrigation system in the orchard. A drip system fed perforated pipes that went down to the roots of each tree. The drips were adjusted to provide each tree with an optimum amount of water supplied from the solar pump in the pond. The pump had float switches wired into the controls so it wouldn’t pump the pond completely dry.

  He brought a local concrete construction contractor in and had a one-hundred-thousand-gallon underground water tank constructed. It was designed with enough support columns inside to allow a twelve-inch concrete roof covered with three feet of earth, and still allow heavy equipment to travel over it.

  A month later he brought in a contractor from some distance away to put in a second “water tank” using the same construction techniques. Brady ran a line to the first tank from the well pump and began filling it with water. The second he didn’t. When it was finished, it would be a 30’ x 45’ x 9’ blast, fallout, and environmental shelter with two entrance/exits and an escape tunnel. But the final work would be done by someone he trusted with the information.

  While they were there on the second tank project, Brady had one of the mason’s chip out the rock around the spring opening. It wound up increasing the flow to just over a gallon a minute, though that wasn’t why Brady wanted it done. Brady wanted a moderate sized spring house built flush to the ground for actual use, but primarily to protect the spring from surface contamination. A pipe, buried deep to avoid freezing, was run down to the pond. They left a way for the water to escape the spring house on the surface, just in case the pipe did freeze or become blocked. It wasn’t good to put back pressure on a spring.

  The final project for the summer, into fall, was installing the heat sink piping for a geothermal, ground source, heating, ventilation, air conditioning (HVAC) system. It so happened that bigge
r was better, so Brady used 30” inside diameter clay tiles for the system. He marked out where he wanted the tiles to go. A second contractor put in more of the tiles. Both were told they were being put in now, but the system wouldn’t be completed until he was ready to build. He wanted to be able to landscape the area and not disturb it later, except for digging up the ends and making connections.

  Since the contractors dug where Brady marked, they had no idea one of the strings of tiles stopped just short of the second “water tank”, with others conveniently placed where they would be adjacent to the buildings Brady would have erected. Some of them were actually for the HVAC system.

  Brady put up a few more cameras with recorders around the perimeter of the main area. He drove down at least once a month during the winter to check the DVDs and change the batteries for freshly charged ones. All that ever showed up on the recordings was wild life, a great deal of it, and the occasional hunter passing through. None had done anything to the well, pumps, or pond, which were about the only things showing above ground.

  The next spring Brady had the first structure on the property built. It was a large utility room and garage, built over a half basement with the well a ways inside one end wall. The foundations were substantial, including the basement walls. The building walls consisted of an outer wall of reinforced, grout-filled, concrete block.

  Inside the block wall solid foam insulation was sprayed on, and then a twelve-inch-thick, staggered six-inch stud, wood wall was erected, covered on the living space with ¾” marine plywood and vapor barrier, and the space between the plywood and insulated block wall filled with minus ¾” crushed rock. A six-inch concrete ceiling was poured and then an enameled steel hipped roof installed over it, a thick layer of insulation being sprayed in to cover the ceiling.

  The openings for several small windows, three regular doors, and three 9’ garage doors were left empty. The doors and windows would be installed later. Two cameras went into the building. There still wasn’t much to steal, just the pumps. The building might be vandalized, but Brady was prepared for that. Even the steps down to the basement area of the building were of steel, not subject to much damage.

  The same with the electrical and plumbing. The rough-ins were done, but the finish components were not installed.

  And then Brady had some walls constructed. Sort of here and there, going all different directions. Tall, thick walls with deep foundations. Some of them quite long. The walls were reinforced concrete block on one side and the ends, and interlocking retaining wall blocks on the other. The two rows of blocks were tied together regularly with metal ties. The area between the block walls was filled with compacted crushed rock. Five feet wide at the top, seven at the bottom. Two of the walls connected to the garage/utility building, but were freestanding on the other ends.

  The walls took everything he had budgeted for the year, and then some. He got a couple of complaints from the gravel pit operators from which he was sourcing the rock. He was taking everything they were producing and his other regular customers were complaining.

  But the business was booming. He and Harry, plus two others, concentrated on the detective work. Barbara was running the security operation and had hired two office staff to help her.

  The following year Brady didn’t do any building. Instead he made occasional trips to camp out, change batteries on the surveillance equipment, and check on the place. And empty the heavily laden Suburban of its contents to put them into the shelter space through one of the roof hatches each trip. He carefully covered the hatch up each time and camouflaged it before he left.

  So far, the civilization had not ended and Brady had spent a small fortune already to prepare for it. That didn’t deter Brady. All the things he was seeing happening here in the good ol’ USA, as well as events around the world, had him convinced that it was only a matter of when, not if, he would need to use his major preparations. He’d already used the minor ones. He’d been stuck on the highway twice, for hours each time. St. Louis had another flood, and this winter was shaping up to be a record breaker. Nothing that made him want to leave the city. Yet. He took comfort in the knowledge that he could, now.

  All through the process over the years that had passed, beside learning and acquiring things, and building, Brady had been cultivating people. Very carefully. Many of those he was feeling out were his employees, but by no means were they the majority.

  Barbara was a given. She had a place for her family reserved at Brady’s. And since the apartment where he lived wasn’t really prep friendly, she reciprocated with offering her house for local bug-in situations for him.

  He’d found out the hard way, despite Barbara’s admonishment to be careful, that selling the idea of preps was a hard job and needed just the right touch. And then it didn’t always work. He lost one of his few friends when he began insisting that he and his family become more prepared.

  Brady was much more careful after that. And since he didn’t really consider himself as expert at preparedness, since he’d only been preparing such a short time, he began trying to get people to visit some of the websites where he’d learned so much. That was in addition to the FEMA sponsored sites, which seemed to elicit a better response.

  But as things worsened in the world, some of the people were becoming more open to the idea of preparing. He began to get the makings of a mutual aid group, or MAG. Barbara was a big help in that. She’d been working toward it for years. Just hadn’t found the right people. But Brady was good with people for the most part.

  Barbara, Harry, and three other employees finally committed to building on Brady’s property, and contributing, to one degree or another, to some of the projects Brady wanted to do. He really wanted three more major investors, though two would allow him to complete the project the way he had come to envision it.

  Both Jonesy and Lieutenant Sandra Harrison bought in as minor investors.

  Even a couple of the major news networks were hinting at the possibility of one of the regional wars expanding to a new World War. Global warming was a fact, and its effects were beginning to affect the world’s weather and coastlines.

  Finally, Brady’s doctor saw the handwriting on the wall. Dr. Amos was one of the people Brady had been gently working on, to bring him into the fold. Dr. Amos, one dentist, and one other doctor in his practice agreed to join the MAG. All three would build at the compound and invest in the communal projects.

  About the time that Harry took three rounds of .380 ACP in a shootout with gang members he was tracking, Brady got the surprise of his life. A national security firm wanted to buy his operation. It had a very good reputation and was still growing. They wanted in on that growth.

  Brady negotiated with the company’s representatives for a month and got the price up considerably more than their first offer, and most importantly, got an immediate buy out, rather than the term buyout the company wanted. Brady was able to stay on as a very well paid consultant and contract operative.

  It turned him loose to get started on the rest of the building he would be supervising. Harry agreed to move to the compound with his family and keep an eye on the place during the construction of his own place, as well as Brady’s place and the construction of the community features. He was recovering well, but it would take some months before he was ready for action again. He was able to get around enough to supervise the contractors.

  Brady already knew the contractor he would use to build his house and had the drawings ready. The others were free to hire pretty much whomever they wanted. There were a few stipulations in the agreement Brady had with the others. One was that each of the houses had to be built between the existing freestanding walls.

  Another was that the housing unit have a back wall built similar to the existing walls, with both block walls being reinforced concrete block. And that wall had to be placed so it projected five feet beyond the existing walls, parallel to them, with a slight bend at the center. That would give defensive coverage
along each of the walls from the side.

  A third was that the unit must have a full height, full basement, designed with fallout protection in mind for at least one fourth of it, with another fourth set aside for prep storage.

  The unit had to be energy efficient and set up to go totally off grid when necessary. Brady left it open for the owners to choose their own power and fuel sources. All fuel tanks would be located together in an area protected by berms. Brady had allowed enough space for his own tanks, the community tanks, and the private tanks to be installed.

  Getting the fuel tanks installed and bermed was the first thing Brady did after he had the commitments he wanted. That and getting them filled. He footed the bill to fill the private tanks so they would be full come what may. Everyone was beginning to feel a sense of urgency. Plans for the individual housing units were finalized within two months.

  Brady was able to contract to have all the basements dug at the same time, gravel drains put in, with the drains and basement sumps piped to the pond. The basement walls were poured and back filled before winter set in. Long lead items were ordered. Construction would start as soon as reasonably good weather in the spring arrived. Everyone hoped they would be allowed the time.

  Others seemed to be getting concerned enough to begin making preparations, like the majority of Brady’s MAG that hadn’t been prepping for some time. They were getting put on back order lists for many of the items on the recommended equipment and supplies list that Brady and Barbara had developed for the MAG.

  Brady’s chosen contractor began work on his housing unit in March, as did Harry’s, after a very mild winter in the area. Barbara’s unit was started in April, and the others in May. Except the world situation had calmed somewhat, and three of the participants were waffling on whether or not to continue in the MAG. One was a primary investor, the other two minor.