According to my original gantt chart, I should have had the whole footing done 6 weeks ago, not just the basement. We got a late start and both the excavation and footings were stretched out over too many days. I really need to try and catch up before winter sets in.
The latest little thing to go wrong was my steel stud distributor breaking up with the manufacturer of the Marinoware studs that I wanted to use. The distributor tried substituting for another brand that does not include the triangular cutouts that I need. These are critical because they allow the shotcrete to go thru the studs and tie everything together.
I couldn’t accept the substitution, so my order was canceled and I needed to start again with another distributor (from the next county over). However, the new distributor quoted me a price ~20% more than the original distributor for the same products. I know the price of Steel has gone up about 18% over the past year, but ~20% over 1 week is a bit more than I could accept. Thursday and Friday I was making calls trying to get the price back down again. Every time they called me back, I was on the phone in another meeting (at my real job). I will need to pick that back up on Monday (which actually looks fully booked already).
In the mean time, I ordered a 20′ steel container for the site. I will use it for secure storage and as a workshop. I had been very tempted to buy one (for $1300 plus delivery), but at only $76 per month to rent, I couldn’t justify the purchase.
I also ordered the steel track (from the first distributor) so I can start laying out the walls on the footings. The track doesn’t need to be MarinoWare, and actually ClarkDietrich has flexitrack for less than half the price of the MarinoWare track. I just really wanted to get started, and I needed to put in the track before the studs anyway. But even those were a special order that will take a few days to come in…
So, this all left me with nothing to do on the site this weekend.
I decided to focus on finding some of the things I will need later. Buying a pickup truck is pretty expensive, and my car just won’t die, so I long-ago decided it would be financially prudent to buy a small trailer instead. I already have a hitch on my car from my bike rack, but my car can only handle pulling about 2500 lbs. It also turned out that getting temporary electrical service was more expensive and much more hassle (it requires its own inspection) than just buying a generator. I started looking on Craigslist List Friday night and found a few good prospects for trailers and generators.
Saturday morning, each of my kids had a Soccer game. I decided to go to the games and call Craigslist list from there (to setup meetings). I drove separately so I could come and go if I needed to. Before the game even started, my wife mentioned my plan to one of her friends within earshot of my son’s coach. He happened to have a generator that he had been trying to sell. He came over and told me his price, which was quite a bit higher than I was seeing on Craigs list (which is probably why it hadn’t sold). I just handed him my smartphone (with a Craiglist app) so he could browse and get a better idea of the prices I had been seeing. He quickly saw that he would need to drop by over $100 to get into the right $/Watts ballpark. We agreed on $285 for his nearly new 5500 watt Porter-Cable generator. I would have paid closer to $700if I wanted a brand new equivalent. It will power my hammer drill and table saw with ease and even be able to handle a MIG welder (using its 240V socket). When construction is done, it will be a decent backup power source for the house.
We also got talking about trailers and he told me about his folding trailer. I liked the way it could be stored more easily than the trailers I was seeing on Craigslist List. He told me where he bought it (Harbor Freight Tools) and even gave me a coupon.
With the trailer/generator plan sorted out, I could relax and watch the games.
On the way home, picked up the generator and two boxes that contained the parts for a 4×8 folding trailer. Due to a combination of a special deal and the coupon, I got it for only $260 with tax. This was pretty good compared to the $650 trailers I was looking at on Craigslist, the only catch was I needed to assemble it and buy some wood for the deck and side rails.
Fortunately, my brother-in-law, John, had come to the soccer game and was willing to spend his afternoon helping me out. It wasn’t “hard” to assemble, but it had a lot of pieces and having a second set of hands (with their own socket set) helped a lot.
This next week will have a lot of rain and I have a lot of “work work” to do. I plan to get back to working on the house on Thursday or Friday. With any luck, I will be putting up studs by next weekend.
Today was day 3 of the footings… Our first day pouring concrete on the site. The actual work was really all done in about 2 hours, half an hour if you just count the concrete pour time, so it is hard to call it a day. The inspector, Dale, needs to check the footings before the pour and his MWF 10 to noon schedule meant we couldn’t fit this into Monday afternoon like the footings guys wanted.
Here is today’s timelapse video;
Thunderstorms were predicted for 1:00, so I called the building inspector to see if he could put me early on his rounds. He agreed and put me first. I texted Doug Dysert by 8:30 and hoped that would be enough lead time to move the pour earlier…
The inspector arrived just after 10 AM. Keep in mind, this was my first inspection, so I was a little bit nervous. The first thing he did was check out my posted permits. Then he went down into the excavation and gave the forms a good look. The inspector was actually very friendly and said the design was a “work of art” and the execution was “very well done”. He found a couple spots where the rebar was a bit too close to the boards (there is supposed to be at least 2” between the rebar and the forms) and told me to sort that out before the pour. We chatted a bit and then he handed me my “Inspection Notice”, with “approved” written on it. He left by 10:15.
I texted Doug to say we were all ready for concrete, but it turned out that the concrete was scheduled to come at noon anyway. Two of Doug’s guys (Don and Chris from the previous day) arrived at about 11:45. The concrete mixers (two of them) and the pump truck all arrived around noon. It was pretty awesome to see the pump truck extend its huge feet and then unfold its 135 ft arm. I wish the timelapse camera had been angled to catch it.
The concrete pump truck was pretty huge. Its 400 horsepower Cummins diesel motor powers 4 powerful pumps that push the concrete at 4800 psi. The operator told me that he could pump up to 210 yards per hour, but he had it set on the slowest possible setting for my small job. I got my order slip from the driver to confirm that it was 2500 PSI concrete with a slump of 5 inches. It had the ¾ inch natural stone aggregate (6A) along with sand and fly ash.
Fly ash is what Charles Dickens would have seen coming out of the smoke stacks of dirty coal factories before they started capturing it. Trapping that pollutant it in concrete is a good thing. It is also pretty much free (waste product) and replaces some of the Portland cement, which has high embodied energy (and cost). Its tiny particle size increases workability (think tiny ball bearings) of the concrete, so the water content can be reduced, which increases strength and durability… It is really a win-win additive.
Then the clouds parted and the sun came out. The concrete got pumping and things went pretty fast after that. They pumped out most of the 23 cubic yards of concrete in about half an hour. I don’t think the crew had enough people to keep up like they would have preferred. I jumped in to help with the screeding. Even the pump truck operator helped moved the concrete pipe around when he got tired of waiting. The concrete was pretty thick with ¾ inch stones. None of the footings blew out, but it did bulge in a couple spots, which used up more concrete than we were expecting…
For footings, they just screed, they don’t trowel or float. Since the tops of the forms were already level, screeding was just a simple process of “sawing” a board back and forth over the top of the form to level it out.
We ended up needing to use the concrete that was in the bottom half of the long pipe to fill in the last bit of the forms. The pump driver basically dumped it on the sand at the top end of the driveway and we had to bucket it over and down to the footing. Don was using a 5 gallon bucket and I was using a 2 gallon bucket (only other bucket available), but I joked that at least I was filling mine up all the way.
With the last bit of concrete, I built myself a 5 gallon bucket rocket stove. I made the inner form out of cardboard (the night before) and wrapped rope and saran wrap around it to “spiral” the flow. My hope is that it will make a little flame tornado that will push even more heat into the concrete and increase the draft further. I’ll make a separate post on that if it works. This concrete wasn’t exactly designed for high heat so it may not last long.
Then the rain came down again. It was actually a line of storms, hundreds of miles long, all lined up to pass over my site, and nowhere else. They guys thought it would blow over soon and decided to wait it out in the truck. I got in with them and asked how long we would be able to push the vertical rebar dowels into the concrete. They told me not to worry about it, we had “hours”…
Well, nearly an hour later, and the township tax assessor called and asked me to drop off a copy of the plans. The assessor had been out to view the site while we were not there and was totally confused by my footing. She was only about 2 miles away, and I wasn’t doing anything right then, so I took the plans over to her. I hope she devalues the home as much as my bank’s appraiser does. Unfortunately, she seems to like it.
When I got back, Doug was on the phone. Understandably, He didn’t want his guys to sit there waiting any more. He said they could just drill the rebar in later (for ~60$/hr). As I hung up with him, the rain stopped. We went down to check out the concrete and found it was already too stiff to hammer the rebar into anyway. It wasn’t my plan, but now I will have more time to carefully mark the position of the dowels, so it may be for the best.
Not sure if it was just the dollars talking, but Doug really didn’t like idea of the PVC tubes as rebar receptacles. He pointed out that they would be a weak point in the connection between the footings and the rebar. They do not have the strength or the grip. I was more interested in the convenience because I don’t think I need strength or grip in that location. Perhaps we were thinking about different locations. I agree drilled rebar will be critical for the pillars under the concrete ribs. Not sure if we will use the PVC when we get to the main footings, but I have 250 of these things cut and ready to go.
The rain washed off the concrete “crème” and left an exposed aggregate look. I kind of like it and I think the shotcrete will stick to it well. Another “day” done.
I still haven’t seen the bill (or paid anything). In order to get a reasonable bid on this unusually complicated project, I had to get the bid based on “volume and materials”. I thought that was safer than “time and materials” because at least the volumes were calculated beforehand. Basically, I agreed on the cost per cubic yard for forming and pouring as well as the cost, per ton of rebar, for placing and tying the rebar. But I do not yet know what he will charge for the materials (such as the wood, rebar, and concrete) or the total cost of the pump truck, or how the over-orders of material will affect the bill. I am a tiny bit nervous about that.
Today was day 2 of the footings. We needed to level them and get the rebar in and ready for inspection. Here is the time-lapse video for the day;
I figured we would be able to get it done in just a few hours, so I booked the inspector to come during his next available slot, 2 days away. They Dysert Concrete guys usually work in a bigger town near by and didn’t realize that my township only has one inspector and that he only inspects for 6 hours a week. They assumed they could finish the rebar, call in the inspector and still pour the same day. Fortunately, we talked about the plan at the start of the day. Some quick phone calls were made to stop the concrete trucks and then they got to work unloading the rebar and other equipment from the truck. Doug Dysert didn’t make it out today (so I still haven’t been able to give him a check or see a bill). Baudilio, who I worked with the most on Friday, returned, but with two new guys; Don, a more experienced (20 year) veteran and Chris, the younger guy (9 years experience, but only one week with Dysert) who got the less pleasant jobs.
Bau got to work on adding stakes around the footings while Don got to calculating the volume for the next days pour (I wasn’t surprised that his number was half a yard higher than my computer model predicted). Chris, the new guy was unloading the truck. I was just standing around without much to do. So, I asked if I could use the motorized tamper. It was kind of fun, as long as I didn’t try to back up. I went around the “track” a few times until I felt like I was wasting time.
Talking to Doug on Friday and he mentioned that these motorized tampers are pretty expensive if you buy them new. He said that the motors don’t last long, but the base lasts forever. He always looks for an old one that doesn’t run, buys it cheap and then replaces the motor. Good as new for less than half the price.
Then the more experienced guys got to work leveling the footings using a rotary laser level and a sensor on a measuring rod. They set the rod on the top of the footing and the sensor beeps to indicate if it is higher or lower than the laser. Fast beeping meant they footing was too high and needed to be lowered until they got a steady tone. Slow beeping meant it was too low and needed to be raised. Either way, they would screw the forms to the stakes at the correct height and continue on to the next section.
While they were doing that, Chris was cutting “rebar chairs”. These keep the rebar at the right position in the concrete and out of the sand. I “helped” by suggesting that he could probably cut thru more than one at a time. I like to think I increased his productivity by 600% ;^) Again, without much real work to do, I tried to keep myself busy by distributing the rebar chairs around the site.
After the forms were leveled, there were some gaps under them, particularly where they had been lifted up by several inches. Again with nothing else to do, I got to work backfilling behind the forms with dirt so they concrete wouldn’t just leak out. It turned out that I had not back-filled nearly enough and Chris went around behind me and did a lot more.
Meanwhile, the other two guys finished leveling and switched to bending and placing rebar. They had brought a manual rebar bender/cutter, but never used it. Instead they used a concrete saw with a 12 inch grinding wheel for cutting (caution, that rebar is still hot for a long time after). All the bending was done “freehand” as needed. They did have a rebar tie gun that is 
supposed to make the job easier, and it probably did, when it wasn’t messing up, or running out of energy, and it sure used a lot of tie wire (several reels worth). I looked up the specific gun they were using and it costs $3,385 to $3,865 depending on the specific model.
Warning to anyone who wants to come out and help me: I think I will tie the rebar in the walls and ceiling with manual rebar tie hooks that use the little pre-cut and looped pieces of tie wire. I wonder if an 8 year old and a 10 year can handle that?
The #4 rebar is pretty easy to bend, but not very easy to “curve” into the right shape, especially once you mess up. I tried a few curves and decided I was hurting more than helping, so I stuck to the straight pieces with the simple bends.
The experience with free hand curving rebar was enough to convince me that such an approach would not be acceptable when I am working on the rebar for the vaults. I will look into getting the rebar “factory” curved, or else build some sort of jig out of stakes to try and come up with a more precise method.
B
efore heading out there, I had looked up the coordinates where the “concrete encased electrode” would be. This is basically using the rebar in the footing as an additional grounding rod. So I set that up, complete with the rebar grounding clamps.
Lastly, I helped position some tubes in the footings so that we will have bleed holes, holes for the radon pipes and an exit to the septic system later.
We were done in just over 4 hours.
Next up, inspection to check our work and then we can pour the concrete.
The latest little thing to go wrong was my steel stud distributor breaking up with the manufacturer of the Marinoware studs that I wanted to use. The distributor tried substituting for another brand that does not include the triangular cutouts that I need. These are critical because they allow the shotcrete to go thru the studs and tie everything together.
In the mean time, I ordered a 20′ steel container for the site. I will use it for secure storage and as a workshop. I had been very tempted to buy one (for $1300 plus delivery), but at only $76 per month to rent, I couldn’t justify the purchase.
