It has been a while since I have updated the blog and a lot has happened.
The footing layout took quite some time due to the complexity of the footprint and some days I wondered if we were making real progress or not. One day the resident safety officer arrived (Judson) who promptly placed placards all over the job site with instructions for various items like “Yield to traffic on bridge”, “Junk yard ahead” (for where they have accumulated all of my scrap material), “Do not step on string” and my favorite which explained why progress was sometimes slower than desired, “Lose ground”. J The picture explains it all be we still get a good chuckle out of this one.
It was a nice change to get to work on rebar. Everyone joined in on the fun with the boys starting off distributing the corner pieces around to where they needed to go, Aric cutting straight rebar to length while I laid out the rebar and did the initial measuring, marking and tying with Sally following to do the final tying and setting. The plans called for 4 runs of #4 (1/2”) rebar with a cross piece every 16” for approximately 2,000 ties for just the footer.
Liesl and Leif helped with keeping us supplied with rebar ties and rebar chairs to keep the rebar in the right location above the ground.
This went a lot quicker than I expected but was quite a back-breaker. Overall it took about 12 hours to install and tie all the rebar in the footing since all of the small pieces were pre-cut and I only had to custom bend 12 pieces to handle the 3 step downs. (Picture by Judson)
Next was the vertical pieces of 12x36 #6 (3/4”) that had to be tied and held in place every 12” for another ~1500 ties. When I was bringing all the steel down to the jobsite from the staging area, I had brought down all of the #4 bars that were cut in one load in the truck and carried the uncut 20’ #4 with the excavator. When we got to the vertical L’s I figured I do the same so I took the truck and excavator up to the staging area and loaded the three bundles into the back of the truck with the excavator. It looked a “little” heavy back there but I wasn’t going far, so no big deal. As I came down the hill to the lower level, I think the truck was actually level it was riding so low in the back. I did the math later and figured at 6 lbs a piece times 457 pieces we were over 2,700 lbs in the back of a ½ ton truck. Oops. Judson and Judah worked really hard and laid out all of the pieces every 12” around the entire footing (6 lbs per bar with them carrying 2-4 each trip. When we did the math, we figured they each did over 1,200 lbs of steel work just for those in one day!
Nice work guys and way to build muscle! With the tying going so quickly, I decided to schedule an inspection for Wednesday figuring we would finish up on Tuesday. Tuesday went well and we wrapped up, however when I went down on Wednesday morning to do a final review I realized I had missed a 5’x5’ pad with a 4’ wall on it that needed to be poured at the same time otherwise the pour order would be messed up. I worked to get that in before the inspector arrived and wrapped that up around 1:00. A little after 3:00 the inspector showed and we chatted a bit about the design, etc. before he went to take a look at the footings. As he first looked at the footings he said to me, “You didn’t have a professional do this, did you?” Uh oh, what did I miss or do? Tentatively, I replied, “No… I did it. Why?”. “It’s too neat. They just slap it together and don’t care.” Was his reply. Phew! He looked at a bit more of the work as we discussed the things he was reviewing and he signed off with no issues! With the inspection done, it was time for a break to work around the farm, get some R&R by going to the Western Washington Fair and waiting for the first pour on Monday which I thought would be a nice cap to the end of my 6 week sabbatical.
Monday, (the last day of my Sabbatical) we finally poured concrete! I had been sweating it all week as I checked and re-checked my calculations (435 lineal feet of 30”x12” footing X 2.5 cubic feet per lineal foot / 27 cubic feet per cubic yard) for how much to order in. I ran my figures by a couple of more knowledgeable people who agreed it sounded “right” but you never know. Sometimes you’re over, sometimes you’re under. Needless to say, it didn’t boost my confidence too much especially when I was figuring on 40.5 yards plus another 3.5 yards for safety. If we ran short, getting more was going to be problematic as you don’t just bring in a 9 yard truck for a yard of concrete. I had decided to try a concrete line pump for this pour to see how it would work and to save a bit of money since I think all of the rest of the 6-7 pours will require a boom pump to be effective. The pump arrived 45 minutes early and the concrete 20 minutes late. Not a great start but better than the other way around. Fortunately my help had all arrived and was raring to go. I can’t thank enough all those that came out to help: Bill Abram, Philip Roth, Jeremy McMahan, Aric Adams, Chris Rogers, Peter Roth, and Jerry McMahan.
Of course concrete is a spectator sport, so here’s some of our fan club cheering us on!
Concrete started flowing around 11:00 and as the first truck ran dry we weren’t filling the forms up very quickly as we were pouring the bottom edges of the deepest forms to let them set up so they wouldn’t spill out as bad. I had ordered the concrete for 4” slump but the pumper was watering it down a bit, so we were losing more out the bottom gaps than I was hoping. Guys started jumping in to build up the dirt around the gaps on the outside of the form to help keep the concrete where it belonged since they couldn’t trowel anything off yet. This may have saved the day, but more on that later. The second truck showed up and we started filling up the forms. By the end of truck two it didn’t look like much progress was being made toward filling up the forms but we were working on the deepest sections of the forms so looks were deceiving. While truck 2 was half empty trucks 3 and 4 showed up back to back. When I talked to the pumper he had requested the trucks be staggered at 15 minute intervals so I was figuring with 5 trucks we should be poured in an hour and 15 minutes so I made sure I had plenty of help to trowel out.
After we started troweling the first section of footing it was pretty clear that he wasn’t pumping nearly that fast and one crew of three guys plus Judson or Judah doing the pre-trowel right behind the pumper could keep up, so instead of 2 crews working real hard we had two crews alternating and working at a reasonable and measured pace (well for concrete anyway)! J With 3 trucks sitting around and we weren’t anywhere close to keeping up I started worrying that there wouldn’t be time to adjust the 5th trucks load if we needed to stretch it a bit. Too late. By the time the second truck finished, the fifth was already on the road, so we were committed to 44 yards. L Truck three went in without incident and I started eyeballing the remaining work to see how we were shaping up for concrete. Maybe. Just maybe. I told the driver to get out his concrete stretcher and the pumper to quit splashing. We were now into the section of forms that were pretty tight and very close to being spot on, so I counted vertical rebar to estimate what remained. The last truck theoretically was carrying 8 yards and I needed just over 8 to finish by my quick calculation. Ugh. I started praying that the load was “long” and we would have plenty. I couldn’t trowel at this point but just keep calculating and watching to see if the next few minutes would classify me as a genius or an idiot. Concrete was oozing out between the forms since this load was extra wet and every drip felt like Chinese water torture.
I knew the pump lines held a couple of wheelbarrows full of concrete so as long as we only needed a wheelbarrow of concrete when the truck ran dry we would be okay since we would lose ~2 wheelbarrows of concrete due to pump waste and cleaning the lines. The moment of truth arrived and with one wheelbarrow of concrete left in the footing to put in and concrete still coming out of the truck I proclaimed success!
After action report showed less than a wheelbarrow still in the truck so we ended up with ~ 2 wheelbarrows of extra concrete and couldn’t have cut it any closer for ordering. Also, if we had lost much more out of the bottom of the forms that the guys stopped up or hadn’t caught the blowout on the garage wall we would have been running for a portable mixer to finish the job. Huge relief. So for Monday I made the Genius instead of the Idiot category, but I still have 6 more pours to do with 6 more changes for success or failure. I think I’ll order a little “longer” next time. J
Well I’m on the road till the end of next week so the project is mostly on hold until then. Next steps will be to strip the wood portion of the forms, backfill the outside of the forms with drain rock, dig and place the under floor drain lines, backfill for the basement floor and then begin building the walls. Keep posted to see how that goes.
