THE HAMILTON MINUTE

The Hamilton Minute Archives


An Engineer in the Woods, Installment 10: Demolition Man, Part 1

Thursday, March 1, 2018
  By the weekend of the Fourth of July of 2015 most of Mom and Dad’s big furniture had found new homes and what was left we had crammed wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling into the workshop and garage.  Every square inch of the house was going to be under construction at the same ti...

PART III--A Bounds Only Description, A Lot and Block Description, and A Strip Description

Thursday, February 15, 2018
  A BOUNDS ONLY DESCRIPTION: A bounds only description calls out the owners surrounding the parcel of land to be described. It really doesn’t describe the property; it only describes the lands surrounding the property. A very simple bounds description is a follows: THAT PORTIO...

An Engineer in the Woods, Installment 9: The Water Runs Through It

Thursday, February 1, 2018
  Kristen and I knew how we wanted to remodel and we knew who the people were that we wanted to do the carpentry, plumbing, electrical and painting.  But we had one requirement that controlled everything.  We wanted the entire Hamilton family to come together for Christmas 2015, al...

Prairie State Pothole Conundrum

Monday, January 15, 2018
Does it seem like the roads in Illinois are worse every year?  Underlying highway funding issues may partly explain the conditions of our roads.  One of the primary sources of revenue to fix roads in Illinois is the motor fuel tax (MFT) which is a flat 19 cents per gallon paid at the pump....

An Engineer in the Woods, Installment 8: The Woodland Pond

Tuesday, January 2, 2018
“What do you mean you have to give away the koi?  You’ve had some of those fish for over 10 years.” Kristen and I were standing on the back deck of our home in Plainfield next to the koi pond that I had built, improved and repaired many times over the past fifteen years or ...