I have been convinced to start a blog
on the subject of our adventures in home building, farm building,
etc. Friend kindly helped me set up the blog. Hence, below, you will
find the second installment of said adventures, followed by the first
part, which was post one.
Part two began with a rapid series of
discoveries about things like anchor bolts and sill plates and
i-beams that kept spinning from bad news to not-so-bad news until my
head spun, but seem to have finally ended up in the right column.
DH assured me the house will be
finished by the end of November. ... now updated to by the end of the
year.
I do not argue, particularly since I very much hope this assessment is accurate, as the thought of a second winter spent in a chilly, muddy trailer rocked by buffeting gales, chasing down hordes of confused wasps woken early from their hibernation by the warmth of the furnace, and cursing at the mice, holds little appeal.
I merely note that it is, as of this writing, the middle of September, and the house is not yet framed.
We had planned to hire out the framing.
This plan suffered a setback when the person in charge of arranging a
date for the crew to begin, declined to answer e-mails, texts or
phone messages of increasing urgency.
Eventually, we cleverly deduced that either the framers, the contractor person or both, had gotten busy with another job and did not feel that informing us of the fact was a productive use of their time.
Next, we considered the quote they had
given us for the project – some $12,000 – and DH mentioned that
he'd really wanted to frame it himself anyway.
Having consulted with the county inspector, and with our building-expert neighbor, and the oracle of the Great Google, then, DH prepared to forge ahead, by first ordering a new set of square washers, called bearing plates, that go over the anchor bolts. As you may recall, these are the things he'd already had to exchange once, because the lumber company provided the size called for in the plans, whilst the foundation company used a size of bolts not called for in the plans. Which, also as previously explained, we'd decided was fine, nay, even a good thing.
However. The building code, in its latest iteration, changed from requiring ordinary washers on the bolts to these much larger square washers called bearing plates ... which then get in the way of the beams going on top of them. Especially if your anchor bolts are not all in the right place.
Consultations were held, research was done. One option was to cut off the offending anchor bolts, drill holes in the concrete and epoxy in new bolts in the correct locations.
DH noted that drilling holes in concrete is a very labor-intensive project, something he observed while drilling the initial hole.
Another option was to cut little slots in all the bearing plates. This would be more feasible were they not galvanized and, hence, highly toxic to handle and/or cut.
Ask and ye shall receive, though, and the universe – and the Great Google, somewhat belatedly in my opinion -- provided a solution: Square bearing plates that come pre-slotted.
DH obtained and installed them, solving one of the approximately 12,687 issues that have come up since the commencement of this little project.
Down to 12,686 issues, he next built a form around the footing that had collapsed, and poured additional concrete in, to add the mass that was lost when the original form collapsed.
Next, we leveled the footings. They should have been level already, but, alas, they were not. Two of the footings are massive squares of cement, and they – once the first one was re-poured -- were fine. Which was just as well, since they surpass our ability to lift. The others are massive rounds of cement, and they were not level at all. Fortunately, they are also of somewhat less mass. So we spent a merry afternoon heaving them onto their sides, scraping away soil from various points underneath them, dropping them flat again, checking with the level, and repeating, and repeating, and repeating.
Very good for the figure, all that lifting and stooping. Or so I keep telling my aching yet-still-not-svelte self.
We cleared away all of the rubble in the crawl space, dropped in some soil, raked that smooth, tossed out 3,492 clods of dirt, and cut off protruding roots, until the crawl space was reasonably smooth. DH used the tractor to move all of the cement rubble that had been in the crawl space to a low spot in the gravel driveway, and smoothed the hills of dirt removed from what became the crawl space, back into a reasonably flat surface surrounding the foundation – probably to the disappointment of the fawns that had been playing King of the Mountain on them in the evenings.
He also cut off protruding nail studs and sledgehammered concrete away from the pipe inlet.
Somewhere in the midst of all that, DH
informed the roof truss company that no, we still were not ready for
the roof trusses, and no, they were Not to deliver them on Monday. Or
any other day in the immediate future. I believe this involved
canceling a doctor's appointment in order to stay home to prevent the
company from delivering them anyway, in our absence. You just can't
be too careful about receiving unwanted – yet – trusses.
He laboriously bored holes in several more chunks of concrete – i.e., the footings – to install anchor bolts in them, and eventually we lifted into place two massive beams later fastened together, on which the house will rest, and attached it to the posts bolted to the footings.
We have now a very solid foundation. And there it sits, floor joists scattered about in preparation for nailing down, because, time continuing to pass as it does, the focus has shifted to earthwork.
There is a fair bit of earthwork to be done before the onset of monsoon season, otherwise known here as fall, winter and spring.
It typically begins sometime in late September or early October.
There are two separate projects involving earthworks: Installing underground electric wiring and water pipes, and putting in the septic system.
So began the saga of the trench.
The trench is 400 feet long, about two feet across and three feet deep, and it runs from the power pole next to the road, diagonally across the field to the house site. It will contain underground power lines (and also water lines from the well to the house, because why not combine high voltage power lines and water whenever possible? They will, however, be separated by a foot of soil. So that's all right, then.)
Near the house at the end of the trench, a distribution transformer will be installed, and low voltage wires extended, via another trench, to the house. This is so because, apparently, mere house-strength wires cannot maintain sufficient power across 400 feet.
But wait. The well is up near the power pole. Will that not mean running another line back up the same 400 feet, whereupon it will lose too much power to run the well? Why, yes. So, plan B. Options include putting in a second meter from the power pole to the well, or installing an alternatively-powered pump. That decision remains on hold pending finishing the first power line.
Digging the trench required taking out a large section of hedgerow that had previously helped to shield our travel trailer and parking area from the neighbors across the street, and vice versa. We were not delighted. In all probability, the neighbors weren't either.
Nonetheless DH completed the job, with the aid of a tractor.
I did not mourn the loss of most of the stand of mature Scotch broom, although DH did, greatly, because he has been corrupted by the golden-flowered beauty of this devil's weed. It's his favorite flower, partly because of the aforementioned bright yellow blossoms and partly because his beloved honeybees like it. (He is also fond of thistles, poison oak and yellow jackets. I prefer nettles and bumblebees, myself.)
I did, however, mourn the loss of several young native black hawthornes, not only because they made a lovely hedgerow that will take some time to replace, but also because there are now dead hawthorne branches and trees artistically strewn everywhere one might wish to walk. Hawthornes were named for their inch-long thorns, which makes wading through piles of them an experience to avoid whenever possible.
Where there are not piles of hawthornes, there are giant mounds of rocky dirt beside a three-foot deep, two-foot wide trench, which has made moving about the property something of an adventure. The trench passes between the travel trailer and the storage shed, and also between the foundation and the driveway; in fact, it cuts through the driveway, which makes getting it completed and covered again a high-priority project.
Although he does not like large equipment – especially equipment that beeps -- our terrier has been unfazed by all of these changes to the landscape. He is a very small terrier, but he has an amazing ability to simply levitate over obstacles like thorn piles and large trenches. Also, the trench has attracted several of our resident gophers and/or moles, and where go the rodents, there also goes he and his Mighty Claws of Doom.
The trench was dug via the aid of an excavator, an endeavor that made me grateful for the invention of monster equipment. As mentioned, the trench is three feet deep. It descends through clay, which at this time of year has the consistency of rock, to lower layers of actual rock, specifically sandstone, in attractive shades of sand and ochre. I am reasonably certain that digging it by hand would have required a year and a team of laborers, either paid or forced. Or one small terrier, could he have been convinced to dig where we wanted him to.
Fortunately, we had the use of an excavator.
Unfortunately, even excavators can suffer labor issues.
About 100 feet from the (future) house, the trench branches, and one section of it takes the road less traveled – to the house, instead of the transformer pad. There it was where we came to grief, when a side of the trench wall collapsed, tilting the excavator to one side and banging it against the side of the ditch. Apparently, it is not good for machines to be tilted and banged.
The only injuries were to the
excavator, which has gone away now, to see the excavator doctor,
while we wince in anticipation of his bill.
Good times.
Meanwhile, back at the farm, the rain has been pouring down onto the trench ... and the piles of soil around the trench ... and this is – surprise! -- not good. In addition to which, the terrier, since he spends a lot of time either in the trench or lofting across it, has transferred a large quantity of it inside the trailer. Helloooo my Little Friend the Swiffer.
Also, the roof truss company called our
lumber salesman this time, instead of us, to announce that they plan
on delivering the roof trusses this week.
He told them no.
I have a bad feeling about the outcome of this issue.
