Ground Breaking, shop build starts - Page 3

scard · #21 07-02-2016, 07:46 AM

...And then there was concrete!

This actually took two tries. The day of the pour, everything was setup and the first of six concrete trucks arrived. As they were preparing to start pumping concrete Tanya was inspecting the truck's load sheet. It's what she does. "Everybody Stop!" Mind you, this is a big orchestrated event with a lot of people, labor, etc.. This was only 3000psi concrete. Not the mix that our engineering called for. We rejected the three trucks that they had loaded and the plant didn't have enough trucks to re-batch our job today. The job was shut down for the day. What happened? The foundation contractor ordered the wrong mix. Oops, sucks to be him. I bet his profit margin just evaporated.

After the fireball and lightning bolt fire from Tanya stopped, everybody recovered and the contractor orchestrated a new show for the following morning. I went out in the morning and cleared all the corners of evil spirits, shook a dead chicken around the site and did a little neckid' dance.

Everybody was on a very short leash for the do-over and paperwork inspection was diligent. So we poured almost 60 yards of concrete with relatively little drama. Only one person threatened to "call the cops" because we had the street mostly blocked. (nod and smile). There were 7 guys on the primary crew and they worked on it for 8hrs solid. It was a little bit of a complicated pour but I want what I want. Materials and trusses should be delivered this week with framing starting next weekend.

Ready to go. We'll be building RVs again soon!

BillL · #22 07-02-2016, 09:23 AM

Kudos for Tanya! This (as you know) is a classic situation with concrete - the second is a hot load, that got water mixed too soon and won't survive the pour process and weakens it.

I want to see the gantry crane installed.

scard · #23 07-03-2016, 09:18 AM

Boy, it has been a full time job babysitting this thing for the first couple of days. We have three sprinklers on it. The unfortunate part is that we couldn't find a hose timer that you could set more often than every hour. That just isn't cutting it during the heat of the day so we're on a 20min watering schedule to manually trigger the timers for a few minutes of watering. I could have planned better and setup a couple of sprinkler control valves triggered by a Pi or something.

The foundation guy says we're "over the hump" now, but we're still keeping water on it today. No cracks yet (knocking on wood). The pi cam caught an intruder with a squeegee scraping off some of the surface scum at 6:30am this morning while I slept. The rest of the forms will be pulled tomorrow. Happy 4th!!

David Paule · #24 07-03-2016, 11:11 AM

Very nice job, and I'm impressed by that concrete catch - good one, Tanya!

On the timers, you could set up a manifold and get a few more hourly timers and arrange them so that one comes on every 20 minutes.

Dave

rockwoodrv9 · #25 07-03-2016, 06:04 PM

Scott, it may be the water hiding them, but I didn't see any control cuts in the slab. That is about the only way to keep cracks from happening. Concrete will crack - either on a control crack line or wherever it wants. With the steel you have in the slab, you won't have any up and down so don't worry too much about cracks. Looking good!

Edit - zooming in on the steel photo, it looks like they may have divided the slab with expansion joints. It is a bit hard to see but looks like your contractor knew what he was doing.

scard · #26 07-05-2016, 05:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rockwoodrv9

Scott, it may be the water hiding them, but I didn't see any control cuts in the slab. That is about the only way to keep cracks from happening. Concrete will crack - either on a control crack line or wherever it wants. With the steel you have in the slab, you won't have any up and down so don't worry too much about cracks. Looking good!

Edit - zooming in on the steel photo, it looks like they may have divided the slab with expansion joints. It is a bit hard to see but looks like your contractor knew what he was doing.

There aren't any control cuts or expansion joints. This foundation is almost completely independent of what the soil does. I'll deal with some simple shrinkage cracks if we have to, but the idea of cuts to catch all kinds of stuff over the years sounds like a bummer. The contractor was ok, but the real expert was/is our structural engineer. He does big commercial jobs with my company and is a real expert. Contractor: "Wow, I've never seen this in residential construction. Size and amount of rebar, depth of piers into rock, size of grade beams, ..." (Scott smiles) I told the engineer (an old hippie that has more commercial work than he can accept due to his local status) what I wanted. "Like a fine custom home, or a bullet proof commercial building. I think we got it. Those statements came from the fact that our house foundation absolutely sucks, and now I know why.

Ok, moving on.
The rest of the forms were stripped July 4th morning and we spent the rest of the holiday cleaning up the perimeter and doing a little initial back fill with the tractor.

As I was typing this, Tanya hollers "Delivery truck!"
Our custom order cedar. Two AMUs. We immediately rejected one of the cedar gable louvers as the loader had tossed 50# of Simpson Strongtie material on top of it and broke most of it. I hope I spend a whole lot of time with those cedar 6x6 posts and 6x8 beams on the porch! If not, I'll be in big trouble. One of those members will bear a porch swing for two.

I met with the framer for a few minutes today so he could see the site and let us know where he wanted material dropped. My -8 project is watching these updates and wants to come home from the hangar.

scard · #27 07-10-2016, 07:18 AM

On Thursday, the main part of our build package arrived. It was interesting to see the expert forklift driver doing multiple three point turns around our trees in order to get the long stuff to the build site. It kind of reminded me of putting a glider in a hangar when it's wingspan is wider than the door opening.

The trusses were being dropped off when I got home from work on Friday. Too bad they had to drop them at the street. Somebody is going to have to walk them back to the build site about 170' away. They weigh 170# each. I hope they fit! You would be surprised how many ways it could be that they are the wrong length.

On Saturday, the framing crew of 4 showed up 8am and got with it.

By noon, we had four walls! Amazing. The scale of this thing is starting to become real. Those 12' tall walls are way up there. Where is that certificate of insurance...?

Yep, two guys hauled all the trusses and stacked them up next to the building in order.

Rack 'em, stack 'em, and hoist them with a rope by hand. Those are some strong dudes. I was wondering how they were going to do that.

While the framers were doing their thing and I was "supervising", Tanya spent 5hrs sealing all of the cedar for the porch structure.

By 5pm, we have four walls and all the trusses up and tacked in place.

Tanya's cedar sealing results. Beautiful. We're excited about the porch.

The framers will be back on Tuesday. They are basically just fitting in our "little project" with a 5000 sqft custom home that they are framing.

Paul K · #28 07-10-2016, 07:44 AM

Have to say Scott, watching your progress makes me want to start another build project. I was a house builder in my past, the last project was my "barn" for my RV build. I miss the fun and progress of building.

BillL · #29 07-10-2016, 08:10 AM

Builders' gonna Build . . . . something

scard · #30 07-20-2016, 02:31 PM

It has been a week of progress. Framing out the fascia and soffits took a long time. The radiant barrier roof sheathing is amazing. It is almost "cool" in the building. I'm looking forward to having it 68 degrees when it is 105 outside. The porch structure started going up yesterday and it looks as awesome as we had hoped. The siding is up on the back wall. We're about ready for the metal roof, but first Tanya has to get the fascias painted. The framers promise they'll be done this Saturday (delaying our run north for OSH until Sunday), I highly doubt they'll finish. It has been a full time job answering their questions and solving problems as they come up, sometimes including "...nope, tear it down and try again."

I'm just giddy with excitement to get back to airplane building in here.