When you are building a house, not all the days are big days… There are lots of “odd job” days. I don’t usually setup my camera, and when I do, the footage is not usually interesting enough for a post of its own, but I thought I show a collage of odd-job days to document the gist of it.
The Video:
A little more detail:
The hardest part about these odd jobs is just to find the time for the drive out to the property. Now that the weather is cooler and I am pretty much out of vacation days, I usually wait for a warm enough day and head out to the property after work. But the days are getting shorter, so after I drive an hour to get there, I only manage to put in a couple hours of work before the sun sets. I bought some work lights to extend my time a bit before I need to pack up and head back.
As winter approaches, working around the weather is quite a challenge. The concrete weather proofing, grouting and other tasks often have a minimum temperature for correct application.
I really wanted to get the Quonset hut up sooner, but there were delivery delays. It was eventually delivered just before I had to take a 2 week business trip. I had to protect the delivery from the weather while I was away, so I laid out some plastic to keep it dry. I put the plastic down first and set the steel (all on one skid) on top of it and then folded the plastic over like a taco… The plastic at the bottom keeps the moisture from coming up out of the ground, the plastic on top sheds the rain, and the open sides were to let any moisture that did get in, get out again. I screwed wood strips on both sides of the plastic to keep in its place while I was away… It worked.
We were also in a rush to get rye grass growing before the weather got too cold for it. Actually, fall is the best time to plant grass (the air is cool, but the earth is warm), but I would have liked to start it closer to Labor Day. Sherri planted and raked in most of the seed, but I got in some rake time when I could.
The garage ends also needed insulation against the footings. The basic idea behind “Shallow Frost Protected Footings” is to thermally separate the soil under the footings from the cold air in winter so that ice “lenses” don’t form and push up the footings. The normal solution is to put the base of the footings below the “frost line”, about 4 ft deep in my area. Temperature change happens by conduction, so it doesn’t really matter how “deep” the footings are, the insulation creates a longer path for the conduction and keeps the footings warm. This building code exception to normal building practice allowed me to save a lot of money because I didn’t need to dig the footings as deep and use all that extra digging, concrete and money. Adding on this insulation is a small price to pay. Although, technically, my sandy soil means I don’t really have to worry about frost heave, the insulation is still helpful in keeping the garage temperature more stable.
This last job in the video was just cleanup… We (and the various crews who came to work on the site) had been stacking used wood and rebar on side of the building site. Now we needed to backfill that area and it was time to get that stuff out of the way. We also wanted to protect the better wood and put in under the Quonset hut. Many hands make light work… So Sherri and the boys came out to help. I really appreciate my crew.