Last Saturday found us - surprise! - back up at the property. We spent the day laying out the dimensions of the house and garage with mason string and stakes and squaring it all up. Amazingly - and aggravatingly - enough, the house (with several corners and angles) was square while the garage (a simple 24' x 28' design) was off by 6", and we couldn't figure out where! #*@! Then we started stringing out the individual rooms on the ground floor - specifically the utility room, bathroom, and kitchen in order to get ready for the water lines, electricity, and sewer line(s) placement.
Sunday was an early morning with our excavator and partial crew (previously mentioned Wiry Guy) returning to dig more trenches for water lines, etc. Now, how many contractors do you know who would come out early on a Sunday morning - of the 4th of the July weekend - to work?! We are LUCKY! So, we got a trench dug into and running underneath the south (24') end of the garage. We laid in drain tile(s) through which we'll snake the water and in-floor heat lines. Then the garage pad had to be re-packed and leveled. They also dug a small trench leading out of the house for the external run of the in-floor heat from the house to the garage and Central Boiler.
For the first time during this whole process, we got rained out for only about 10 minutes. Before they stopped and while the rain was pouring down, our excavator grumped, "Who's idea WAS this?!" (To work early on a holiday-weekend-Sunday.) To which we replied, "YOURS!" :)
In the afternoon I headed back home to, as usual, try to get some things done around here (although it never seems to happen!), and Tom shoveled, shoveled, shoveled in the hot sun (it had cleared up). Because of the unique design of timberframe homes, the slab requires special reinforcement - including trench footings which run around the entire perimeter of the house. So, Tom dug the sand out of those in preparation for the cement guys. By my figuring, he shoveled 162 linear feet 24" wide and 10" down.
No comments:
Post a Comment
If you are familiar with me and where I live, please respect my right to retain some anonymity by not referring to me by anything other than Chicken Mama nor mentioning city/town/villages by place names. Thanks!