Kraemer Tower
A fire lookout tower at the top of Dave and Barb Sullivan’s 211-acre tree farm in Polk County, Oregon. The design is documented at lookouttowers.org as the Pedee Fire Lookout Tower. Construction paused years ago partway through the septic install. This is the coordination home for finishing it — a Dave-and-Barb-and-Eli project.
Dave and Barb. Co-owners of the property; co-leads of the project; in roughly that order.
The team
Dave Sullivan owns the property with Barb Sullivan and leads design and funding for the tower. Barb is the day-to-day project manager — Eli reports to her on the build. Eli Kraemer (Barb’s grandson) leads construction planning and execution for both the septic completion and the tower build. Cody and Russell Robertson of Treeline Logging LLC, also d/b/a Solid Rock Construction, are advising on the septic completion — the same crew ran the 2025 final harvest on Stands C, D, and parts of A. Polk County Environmental Health will inspect and sign off.
Eli is a full-time employee on Dave’s payroll, managing the 211-acre Sullivan timberland under a written, periodically updated forest management plan. Staffing the fire lookout is part of those duties — sleeping area and bathroom in the tower while he’s on duty, the way state-staffed fire lookouts across Oregon have worked for a century.
Where we paused
The concrete tank was set in July 2022 and the lines never went in. The 2025 logging job by Cody and Russell provided the money to come back and finish.
The plan, in order
- Confirm where the septic permit stands with Polk County.
- Eli inventories what’s already installed and what materials are on hand.
- Cody and Russell walk the site and tell us what’s needed.
- Eli and Dave start the work.
- Cody and Russell come back and tell us what we got wrong.
- We finish the install.
- Polk County inspects.
- The tower build resumes under Eli’s planning and Barb’s oversight.
Why this site exists
So that everyone — Dave, Barb, Eli, Cody, Russell — sees the same picture of where we are, what’s been decided, what’s coming up, and what we still need to figure out. Photos, schedules, and decisions all live here. If it’s on the site, it’s the shared reality.
Once Phase II ships, the Contribute form lets all five of us add updates directly. Until then, drop notes into Dave’s inbox or Cowork picks them up.
Latest
2026-06-05 — Permit issued; parts inventoried; Cody lending his excavator. Three things moved at once. (1) Polk County issued the septic permit (687-26-000161-PRMT) on June 1 — record status “Permit Issued.” The install can begin. (2) Eli did the first inventory pass and sent photos of the materials already on site — PVC pipe, perforated drainfield pipe, a concrete distribution box, and fittings. They’re on the Septic System page. (3) Cody is dropping by to look at what parts we’re still missing, and has offered the use of his excavator with 24-inch and 30-inch buckets to make trenching the drainfield far easier. See the Solid Rock page for that arrangement.
2026-05-27 — Septic permit application paid and in review. Polk County issued Construction-Installation Permit application 687-26-000161-PRMT on May 26 with a $1,232 fee. Dave paid via Polk County’s ePermitting system the next morning; Hannah Nelson at Polk County confirmed at 17:31 UTC: “Thank you for the prompt payment. I have routed your permit for review.”
2026-05-26 evening — Polk County permit packet shipped. A new Construction-Installation Permit application was mailed to Christina Tisdell at Polk County Environmental Health, mirroring the 2022 scope exactly: ag-exempt commercial fire-lookout tower with bathroom for up to three employees, no showers, no food preparation, 105 gpd / 150 gpd peak.
The Tower page lays out the design pedigree, the FTET engineering history, the 2022 foundation work that’s already in the ground, and how the tower’s scope (sleeping area, bathroom, no kitchen) sits alongside the future ag-exempt employee facility the septic permit also envisions. The new Forest Management page explains the 211-acre tree farm, the written plan it’s run under, and where the lookout fits in that plan.
About this site
This is a small open notebook for the project — an experiment in AI-assisted construction coordination, run openly during the active build phase. The team is five people (Dave, Barb, Eli, Cody, Russell); the audience is mostly the team itself; the public URL is just a convenient way to keep one shared picture. Likely going private after the septic system is finished and the tower build is underway in earnest. ����������������������������������������������������������������������������