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September 2003.
We were very fortunate to have some friends and relations with building experience.
My son and Dees son both have construction experience and my neighbor who
who is a concrete construction worker to help me out.
9/04/05 - Neighbor Jim volunteered to be the concrete consultant and make sure I was
doing things properly. HE was simply Awesome ! He aspired to
help get this job done using tools and supplies at hand with as little
expense as possible. I was impressed to say the least. He
watched and guided me every step of the way. |
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Elvis the duck was very put out and inspected our progress
daily. He protested regularly and left us nasty droppings any time he
didn't like something. |
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Jim came over every Saturday or Sunday to work with me rain
or shine. Footing forms all done and ready for cement. We also had
to build extra footing pads for support and a partial shear wall footing.
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Dee helps coat the footing forms with vegetable oil to help
release the forms from Concrete. Most use diesel fuel, but the veggie
oil is much more environmentally freindly. Loki was inspecting her work.
Notice all the rebar verticals now showing. These were extremely
dangerous
and I'll be relieved when the cement covers them up. |
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It was a hard job sponging on the oil without getting the
rebar also. Only hard due to the bending and reaching around rebar.
The rebar went in pretty easily, I did all the bending with a big pipe so I
didn't rent any equipment for this part at all. I was lucky to find
lots of form boards for FREE through a friend of a friend. Other wise this would have cost $100's
more than it did. |
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9/27/03 - Footing Pour day finally arrives. We had to hire both
a cement truck and a line pump truck for the 10+ yard pour. Man, this
stuff is expensive!
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Jim in command and organizing the group of helpers. We
had Jim, Josh and a Motorcycle riding friend Shawn volunteer to help
with this pour. |
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Josh had the hard job of running the pump line while the
pump driver ran the on/off switch when Josh called for it. Jim
supervised the whole job and Shawn and I smoothed, finished, and set rebar. |
Construction
Stops
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On September 29th I was awakened by a loud heavy buzzing
sound. I went outside to discover the power lines behind our house
screaming noise. I woke Dulane, we called the power company and
discovered they had Upped the power running through those lines from 230KW
to 500KW. Over 200 families were adversely impacted by this action by
the power company. Our construction project came to a screeching halt.
Along with the 200 families we organized a group to force the power company
to do "something" about the outrageous noise. Dulane was voted the
president, and we were in a huge battle. But, that is story for
another day. Suffice it to say the organization we formed pulled off
some great feats to humble the power company over and over, and eventually
after many months we did get a large amount of noise reduction. Our
project was totally halted for a month while we cried and accused on live TV
and plotted to overthrow the power company's noisy upgrade. |
