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.]

Last Thursday was probably the high point of activity for the entire project. The morning started quietly, albeit before 6am, with 2 people spending the morning putting the finishing touches on the wall forms. This involved capping off most of the openings, and ensuring that the walls were square and level. A series of diagonal braces (visible left in lower left corner) were staked into the dirt floor of the site, and then carefully twisted to adjust their length so that an entire wall form was equidistant from a string stretched between the corners. As the day went on, more and more people arrived, raising the noise and activity level.

The cement pump returned during my last business phone call of the day, just after 2pm, soon followed by a cement mixer. By the time I’d hung up the phone, and chatted with the cement pump and mixer drivers, both of whom worked on the footers, at least one more cement truck had arrived. In no time, the site had 2 big double-axle trucks from the foundation contractor, 3-4 cement mixers, the cement pump vehicle, at least 2 pickup trucks, along with my car, my folks’ motorhome, and the Kubota. It was pretty clear that the foundation crew, up to at least 6 people by now, was behind schedule.

Finishing the barn first, the wall crew and cement pump moved to the cabin, where they started with the ground level doors.  Filling up to the top of this part of the form, they carefully smoothed the top of the walls along the lower-level doors, and then clamping forms across the top to keep the cement from squishing out when the walls filled up with concrete.

The wall crew worked their way around the perimeter, pumping in a steady flow of concrete, which slowly flowed around the inside of the frame. A kid with a long 2×4 methodically walked around the top of the walls, pumping the stick up and down to ensure that there were no air pockets in the walls. Someone else came along behind with a board to smooth the top of the wall.  And after the forms were full, they carefully rechecked the plumb of all the walls, readjusting most of the diagonal braces (visible above in the interior).

I want to go on record and say that 4 hours of playing host to 10 truckloads of concrete, various other heavy diesel vehicles, and several dozen people is a hell of a lot more fun than my day job. It was a lot like having a birthday party.  Sadly, by 6:30, the walls were poured and straight, the concrete mixers had hosed themselves out all over our meadow, and most of the wall crew was gone forever.  The cement pump took the most time to cleanup, including the astounding trick of sucking a large plastic plug backwards all the way through the metal pipes on the lengthy boom.  While he sprayed leftover concrete into some of the big new ruts on our abused driveway (Diane’s visit seemed so long ago), I cranked up the tractor to start smoothing it back out–again.  I’ve learned a lot about picking up gravel in the bucket, and I’m conquering the mysteries of the blade.

I’m going to miss being woken up at 6:30 by the precision concrete guys. Friday morning turned out to be the noisiest day so far, as they enthusiastically attacked the forms with large metal mallets, stacking the pieces, and hoisting them back onto their truck. They must have thought it was pretty noisy too, because they were all wearing hearing protectors.

By mid-morning, they were gone, leaving in peace, and alone, with two slightly warm and slightly damp concrete boxes.

What will this place look like in another month, when the logs arrive and get stacked on top of these walls?

I wandered around for an hour, staring at the bare walls of the cabin and barn, trying to picture what it will be like when this is the family home, and what memories ours and future generations will store up here.  Having lived so far away from the Hollow for so many decades, I’d always found it painfully difficult to tear myself away.  At almost 3 weeks, this was probably my longest stay at the Hollow, and I knew that Elizabeth and I would be coming back soon. It just didn’t feel like my business there was complete.

Its  hard to leave a place where such a large piece of your heart lives, with so much yet to do, like photographing all the butterflies on the newly blossoming Joe Pye Weed. Reluctantly, I packed the last of my stuff,  locked the Kubota in the shed, took one last look around, and headed down the gravel driveway in my cement-spattered Subaru.

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

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.]

The storm woke us up just before midnight last night. By 1pm, the National Weather Service had issued flood warnings for our corner of the county. By 2pm, they’d revised the warning. Some time after 3pm, the last of a chain of highly concentrated, noisy, and wet storms finally left us in peace. A couple of the lightning bolts seemed to hit nearby, and as Dad said, there was enough lightning to read a book by. After a couple of hours fitful sleep, I woke up at 5:50AM when a pickup truck drove past the motor home. After all that rain, I wasn’t sure if they were actually going to be able to pour the footings, but they quickly unloaded and were hard at work soon after dawn.

Our rain gage showed 2″ (50cm) had fallen overnight. It left deep ruts in the new new driveway up to the cabin site, and also in the existing drive from the township road. Dad started grading the drive with the Kubota, and we took a quick spin down to inspect the NW corner of our property, where the township road was flooded. The front 4 acres of Heiser Hollow was completely flooded, with the Big Run well out of its banks. We met the first of 2 cement mixers on our way back from the bridge.

The cement pump had already arrived, and was fully outrigged, and the crew had laid forms for the footers, cutting rebar to size with a gas cutoff saw, and lacing it into place within the forms.

The actual pouring went pretty quickly, with a team of 5 guys inside the excavation,

while the cement pump operator controlled the boom from above with a handheld remote control.

After completing the pour, the cement pump and mixer moved down the hillside to start in on the barn, leaving huge ruts in our new 150-ton driveway.

The crew very carefully marked out the dimensions of the wall on top of the footing, and inserted vertical rebar for the walls, which should arrive next week.

The last task was the installation of a set of drain pipes around the base of the concrete footings, connecting them to the drain pipes installed earlier in the week.

The job was done before lunch time, and Dad and I were free to start regrading the driveways with the Kubota. Between the two of us, we spent at least three hours using the scraper blade, and the back edge of the scoop to smooth out the ruts from last night’s torrential rain and today’s heavy equipment.

All that tractor work paid off, with only a minor bit of additional erosion this afternoon an additional series of thunderstorms brought another half inch of rain in the gage. The accumulated rainfall map on tonight’s news shows a big red 5″ splotch just to our west.

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