Rants from the Hollow

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.]

I have a new found appreciation for the earth’s skin, after watching Sheldon and his assistant dig two foundations today, seeing what they uncovered, and observing how they used it.

Originally planned as a pole barn, the location for the barn turned out to have a much steeper slope than anyone realized, with the result that the only practical way to build something that would be practical to park a car or tractor in would be to excavate it like a basement, with a solid cement wall on the back, and sides. This also had the effect of doubling the estimated cost of the outbuilding, so we compromised on the budget ceiling by reducing the size by 50%.

The speed and accuracy of the dig was greatly facilitated with a laser level, sitting on a tripod. Sheldon’s assistant held a long adjustable pole, graduated in inches, with a sensor clamped to the top, which peeped whenever it detected the laser. This enabled a precise relative depth measurement, ensuring that the floor and footers were all at the correct depth, and level.

After finishing the garage excavation, including laying some drainage pipes under the drive, the digging duo carefully pegged out the corners of the cabin, and began excavating through what turned out to be about 10 feet of dirt along the back. The garage site had a surprising amount of fine brown topsoil, but there was a much thinner layer at the steeper house site. On both sites, the topsoil was sitting on top of a heavy layer of light brown clay. Under the clay was a layer of shale that crumbled into 2-6 inch thick flat pieces, under the impact of the excavator’s shovel.

The excavation team expressed a great deal of satisfaction with the shale, pronouncing it not only an excellent underpinning to the foundation, and also the perfect material to lay before spreading gravel on the drive. I pointed out that it was a deep layer of that stuff underneath the dam, deeper than could be reached with 1970s excavators, that caused the pond to leak. Cool and dripping with water, it also suggested to me the reason why this property has so many springs.

I picked up a flat chunk of the shale from the cabin and hosed it off. It turned out to be bluish greenish, very different in color and texture from the coarse sandstone boulders on the facing hillside (none of which appeared during excavation). While it probably isn’t sturdy enough to bear a lot of weight, it seemed like a great material for building a small wall or something, so I hand selected some pieces that I felt I’d like to build with some day, filling up 4 Kubota loaders full. OK, so it would be a small wall, or maybe stepping stones.

Its impossible to fully appreciate Sheldon’s hydraulic artistry from still shots. He very carefully positioned his shovel along his fluorescent pink lines, often preparing a spot ahead of time by digging down on one side, or piling up some dirt to raise one of his tracks, ensuring an appropriately level and steady surface. He often used the shovel as a sort of crutch, pushing up the machine and holding it steady while rotating the tracks underneath it, or to gain some extra traction when crawling up a steep and slippery slope. He carefully separated the different forms of dirt and shale for different purposes. The floor of the cabin is completely flat, surrounded by deeper channels for the footers, with completely straight cuts around the outside, with a chamfer of several feet around the lip.

Starting at 7am in a drizzle, the excavator’s worked until an unscheduled and heavy shower arrived at about 6pm. There’s a bit more digging to do tomorrow, but I think the building crew can start building their forms so that they can pour a basement and a barn this week. Looks like it’ll be beastly hot and humid, but at least it isn’t supposed to rain for the next couple days.

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