Got piers
It was another rough and tumble week on the "RV Construction" project. Tuesday was pier drilling day. Tanya met the foundation guy on site at about 7am while I came to grips with getting out of bed. I was 15-20min behind with a cup of coffee and one eye open. From 150' away, through that one eye, as I shuffled toward the action, I could see that Tanya and the contractor were doing some "field engineering" on the pad. The best analysis I could muster was "bummer, we haven't even gotten started and something has already come off the rails." They were laying out the piers for the drillers and one of the spacing dimensions didn't jive on the structural engineer's plans. No problem, Tanya had already made the final executive decision on the dimension by the time I arrived to the brief.
The pier drilling company had two rigs on site at 7:30am and got to work in a friendly competition to see who could drill more holes (the final score was 9 to 5). That was a very interesting process and I watched every minute of the 2.5hrs that it took them to drill the 14 holes while Tanya went to work. All piers were about 10' deep and drilled at least 1' into a solid rock shelf. Our structural engineer arrived about mid way through drilling to inspect the holes and ensure that we were in the rock layer that we expected. He was very happy to throw a 16' piece of 1" rebar into a few holes and have it almost bounce back out. He asked the foundation guy how we got two rigs. "It just happened
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." The key here is to get concrete in these piers ASAP after they are drilled. We moved up the concrete order three hours.
And there was concrete for the piers. That pour took about an hour and the next day and a half was spent setting up perimeter forms.
Then it is time to dig grade beams. The mini excevator made decent progress. If you aren't familiar with concrete pier and beam foundations, it is very similar to wood pier and beam. Except with... concrete. This is opposed to a "floating foundation".
At the end of the week the grade beams were done as well as "final" grade elevations. That sets the thickness of our foundation. The funky trench in the forground is our "homework" for the weekend. To finish all of the electrical conduit into the east wall. This is our primary 200A service entry. So where Exactly is that wall?
So, Friday evening Tanya and I started laying out string lines for this critical wall to place our conduit. In this picture, Tanya is standing in front of an 8' wide full length porch of large cedar posts and beams. Uh, Houston, the wall isn't on top of the grade-beam or pier. It is off by at least 2". TC made an immediate call to the foundation guy that his presence was requested either tonight or first thing tomorrow morning. Time was now ticking on us being able to finish our weekend work.
The foundation guy showed up 8am and we gave him a proper beat down. The piers were drilled perfectly 2" too far from the "datum". I told the foundation guy the words that the structural engineer would say if asked about this. The distance from what we're now calling the datum is a critical distance as it is our truss span. Luckily we have not yet released the latest truss design to manufacturing, but must within the next few days. So the simple solution is to move the wall 2". Everybody is onboard with that solution and I get 6.6sqft more shop space! Woohoo! With the wall string lines moved everything looks much better and Tanya and I got to work on conduit.
"Final grade?" yeah, I don't think so. We spent an hour making a grading map and marking high spots/areas. They'll have guys with shovels out tomorrow to make it right but Tanya just couldn't stand it so she picked up a shovel and fixed 65% of the high spots while I headed for the A/C. I told her she was crazy and that we had hired people to do that part while I departed the scene of the crime.
From the pi cam collecting time lapse.
It was a good week. Steel on Tuesday, final forms on Wednesday, and the big event on Thursday for the final pour. The concrete will be flown over the trees in the last pic with a huge pump truck. Should be exciting. Yeah, I'm burning some well deserved time off work for this paid entertainment.
P.S. Finally they left the keys in the bobcat this weekend! Guess who unnecessarily moved a big pile of dirt Saturday evening
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. "Let's see, turtle - rabbit, of course i've got this. Just like the riding lawn mower
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." Tanya watched as I played tonka truck in the sand box.