Rants from the Hollow

Other than 3 and a half inches of rain and the uncomfortably nearby escape of dozens of hungry lions, tigers, and bears, up until Friday, my parents evidently had a very quiet week at the Hollow. As my mom reports Yesterday we awoke to the sound of a  truck coming up the lane.  We  weren’t expecting anyone as rain was forecast as usual.  But here came a crew of cement guys  despite misty rain, towing a bobcat, to begin laying cement in the lower level  of the cabin.  The bobcat guy  scraped some of the muck off the top of the driveway at the site.  Next came a big gravel truck.  Gravel was spread at the top of the  driveway where the cement trucks would park.  The bobcat guy took loads of gravel down  the slope to the basement level, dumped it into two wheelbarrows over and over  to be carted inside.  After the  first truck left, another came with the same big load to be wheelbarrowed  in. 

He left and a cement truck  arrived but instead of cement it also carried gravel that whooshed down the  chute into the wheelbarrows.  I  watched all this activity from the dry and warm motorhome.  When the first load of cement arrived,  the truck couldn’t be placed close enough to Jay’s office entrance on the lower  level to send the cement down the chute and into the building, so the two  youngest guys carted it in by the wheelbarrow load.  They worked with furious speed — one  full barrow in while the second barrow came out empty and was loaded — just as  fast as one went in and was dumped the other came out — round and round and on  and on they went. The rest of the crew was inside spreading the concrete.  Arlan says there was a chalk line drawn  on the inside wall for the floor level.  The empty cement truck came down the driveway to the turnaround where he  washed the slides used to unload the cement and the revolving drum.  He left, another cement truck arrived,  and the whole procedure repeated.  The trucks carried 6 yards — 2 tons to a yard. Those two young men  wielding the wheelbarrows must have had muscles of steel and they must have been  mighty tired. 

The misty rain  stopped around noon and I put on my wellies to go up the muddy drive to watch  some of the proceedings.  I couldn’t  see into the basement to see how it looked.  The last of the gravel was dumped in  front of the barn/garage which will be done (and I assume the “patio” outside  Jay’s office and Kirk’s bedroom also) when a drain is put in the barn. Janice Heiser

[If you want to see all the entries for the cabin building project, they start here. The next Building the Cabin entry is 5 Pickup Truck Day.]

The plumbers made their first visit this week, brothers who represent a surprisingly small relative increase in the number of people on site with the last name of Yoder. They went over the plans with Elizabeth for the basement bath, laundry, and utility sink, and discussed where we wanted to route the sewage stack and hot & cold running water up 2 floors in a log cabin (the secret is to use interior walls, which will be studded out of dimensional pine and either drywalled or tiled). We also discussed running water from the well, placing a freeze-proof hydrant near the well site, the placement of outside water faucets, and practical considerations in winterizing the house, if we ever decided to do that (the plan is to get a low-temperature thermostat and leave the geo-thermal heat pump turned on all winter). We also decided to use PEX instead of copper.

They dug a channel all the way from the front right of the cabin, where the foundation crew had left a sort of septic port, back to the utility room, which will have a floor drain, across to the left rear of the basement, which will have a full bath.  The plumbing for the main and top floor baths will be inside the rear wall of the basement bathroom, and will go up in about a 6 inch space behind the shower of the bathroom on the main floor.  Above shows the base of the chimney in my basement office, which will be closed off, and covered with pseudo-stone.  The pile of dirt above will be a Dutch Stone hearth supporting a wood stove.

The dirt was pretty easy digging in the front, but in the back, they had to use a small pneumatic hammer and picks to dig out all the shale.  The Yoder Bros are working in the approximate area of the laundry room above.  Before the end of the day, they’d completed everything that needed to be done before concrete could be poured.

[The first entry for Building the Cabin was July 18, 2011.  The next entry in this series is Great Room.]

After a couple of quiet, and blissfully rain-free days, today started too early, with the 0550 arrival of a pickup truck full of rebar. A large truck specialty truck arrived with a big hydraulic boom on the back, and a load of cement forms. Before that truck had an opportunity to cause further damage to the platinum-coated driveway, yet another specialty truck showed up. This one was a long hopper, with a big concave conveyor belt hinged along the side. It pulled up to the cabin, and then barn foundations, unfolded its conveyor, and proceeded to spray river gravel all around the sides of the footings, covering the drain pipe. It was a big truck, and it made a big impression on the driveway.

At this point, the poured walls truck had its chance at the driveway, parking behind the cabin site, setting some outriggers, and then unloading the forms. Two young guys, one apparently Amish, and the other apparently not, spent the entire day stringing rebar, putting forms into place, and setting in frames for the windows and doors (those are the wooden things in above picture).

Meanwhile, Sam arrived, sat down with his subcontractors, and then called Redi-Mix for another 15 tons of big limestone chunks, which was enough for about a 4 inch layer on half the driveway. By the end of the day, the forms looked to be pretty much done, and the crew left for the night.

Anticipating a return of the cement pump and truck tomorrow, I spent my evening working on the drive, bringing in some additional stone in the Kubota’s bucket, and using the blade and bucket to spread it into some of the low spots. That #4 stone is hard to work with, and its a real trick to even scoop up half a loader load with the tractor. I ended up doing about half of it by hand, scavenging some more slate and tossing in some stray limestone that had escaped beyond the edges of the drive. I’m a lot slower than a bulldozer, but I can go a LOT farther with a ton of gravel.

Around mid-day, the water level in the pond finally dropped below the lip of overflow pipe. It’d been a cheerful and loud gurgle ever since the storms on Saturday and Sunday. The pond overflowed for a solid 4 days this week, which is a lot of extra water. Although today and yesterday were gorgeous days, that felt almost cool in the mid to low 80s, the cabin site is still very muddy. Unprecedented for July, fresh grass is growing on the bare spots on the dam where I’d tractored out to repair the subsided soil above the overflow pipe. Much of the dirt under the new drive is still like pudding, sagging visibly under the weight of a tandem axle fully-loaded gravel truck.

We should get the foundation walls tomorrow, which will be the first time this year that I’ve looked forward to it pouring down here.

[The first entry for Building the Cabin was July 18, 2011.  The next entry is Basement Walls.]