It Don't Mean a Thing If It Ain't Got That Schwing

I got a text bright and early this morning:

Pumper truck on the lot.

I couldn't wait to get breakast done and lunches packed to run down to see. 

And there it was being fed by the concrete mixer!  Ever since I raised 3 boys, I have liked watching construction equipment.  Having it on your own project is twice as exciting.  I also got a kick out of the name of this big rig with its boom swinging down over the lot:

That's right folks, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that Schwing!

I have no idea if this is the name of the pumper truck manufacturer or the name of the contractor.

I just know it tickled my funny bone.

They were already at work, pouring and smoothing concrete along the front of the house.

I thought this guy was a smooth operator, but if you've lived long enough, you know that no matter how smooth you are there is always someone coming behind you who thinks he is even smoother.

I had to leave before I could find out who was in charge, but one of my faithful blog readers stopped by later and was kind enough to send photo evidence of who was in charge.  Can you see who is calling the shots here?

Here's the on site supervisor.  Haven't we seen him before? 

Well, he was directing them well as they came on around the far corner of the house.

He got a little help from the guy with the remote control.  Seems like all these construction rigs have remote controls now.  I guess people lose them just like at home.  This guy has a clever solution to keep the remote from getting lost in the truck cushions or dropped in a dirt pile:

A strap on remote control.  It's going to be all the rage this Fall.

Next up will be the footers for the retaining walls.  There are a few curves to follow:

And then we have what looks like a salmon ladder, but I don't think salmon can swim through concrete, so it must be a retaining wall:

Up they swim

and on up to spawn!

Raising the Bar

Today the foundation guys started throwing the rebar down in the trenches.

Actually, they didn't throw it, they carefully laid it in place.

It is daintily raised in the air, like a petticoat avoiding the dusty streets, by the little coat hangar wire contraptions shown here.  There was some good natured grumbling from these veterans of foundation work about how it worked just fine to throw it down and pour the concrete over it.  Apparently suspending the rebar makes sure it doesn't wick up moisture from the soil and rust inside the concrete.  They all seemed to think it was much ado about nothing but were perfectly happy to follow the rules.

I guess they like passing inspections.

The work of tying the rebar together with wires seemed so... so...

Well, let's just say that I started wondering if Dante ever mentioned this particular Circle of Hell.

Imagine sitting in a shallow grave trench in the sun in 95 degree heat tying steel rods together with wire that hurts your thumbs when you twist it.  Now imagine doing it all day long.  Just watching them made me want to run back to the safety of my laundry room, ripe with trunks from summer camp.

Eventually, they added a third dimension to the project and began to literally raise the bar -- the rebar.

Once they added all the vertical components, they could fit, they festooned them with orange safety tips.  I was very glad of that.  My imagination was already leading me places I didn't want to go before the old timers started swapping stories of unfortunate colleagues getting impaled on rebar.

With all this steel, I don't think this wall will be going anywhere.

If there does happen to be a small Minotaur in there, I don't think he's going anywhere either.  Looks like they've got him trapped.

In the mean time, there seems to be a bulldozer in my back yard.

Putting One Footer in Front of Another

Building materials!

It was exciting to see rebar and lumber on the lot on Monday.  That was surely a sign of big things about to happen.

I peered down in the hole and saw plans being consulted,

and stakes being caefully measured and placed.

Tuesday morning things were really a flurry of activity.

Jason was back, rearranging a bit of dirt, the outline of the house was nearly complete and the footers were being dug out.

Parts of the scene looked a bit like an archaeological dig.

I didn't know that they would stair step the retaining walls.  I thought they would follow the slope.  Apparently this is a better method.  I guess it is stronger if all the force vectors are pointing straight down with no horizonal component encouraging the wall to slide on down the hill.

All these trenches looked so much like a maze that I found myself yearning for a couple of little boys, a minotaur toy and a ball of string.

Today there will be more digging and then they'll begin to put in the rebar.  I thought the concrete would go in once the footings were dug, but there is a lot more work to do. Also the first structural inspection has to happen.  The prep work has to be inspected before the concrete can be poured.

Drawing a Line in the Clay

Tuesday saw the last of the dump trucks. 

20 more loads with a bit set to the side for saftety, and the basement was dug.

There were a few interesting rock layers in the dirt, but no really big rocks.

One worry I had was that we would hit a big granite outcropping when digging the basement.

We had almost no rock.  We all guessed that would be the case, given the size of the trees we removed. But still, I had the nagging worry of what to do with a big granite blob in the middle of the basement.

No more worrying about that! Whew!

The footer guys came out yesterday and staked out the footers for the basement.  They had a reference stake on the front yard to measure everything off of.  The stake was the surveying equivalent of Greenwich Mean Time for our lot.  Here they are pulling a measurement off of GMT.

They had this enormously tall level to make sure they didn't get erroneous measurements.  The fellow with the level would make sure all the bubbles were centered and then the fellow at GMT would tell him how much to move the level to achieve the correct distance.  Such clever tools!

By the end of the day, they had staked out where the footers need to be.  Now we just have to get our surveyor back out to make absolutely certain we are where we think we are and don't have any walls in the set back.

You've got to start off on a good footing, afer all.

Gettin' Down and Dirty

On Wednesday, I saw the most beautiful sight I had seen in a long time:

I was so excited to see a real, life sized dump truck on the lot!

Unfortunately, the driver misunderstood and thought he was the object of my enthusiasm.

Word got around and the other driver thought he'd better check his look in the side mirror.

Lookin' good, Billy Ray! (Feelin' good, Louis....)

I thought I'd better turn my focus elsewhere.  I didn't want to start anything.  We have enough dirt on this job as it is.

My excitement was so understandable, though.  After a week or so of trying to sell the dirt, we thought we had a home for it.  Only the people who said they wanted it kept leading us on and playing games.  First it was too wet, then they failed an inspection, and finally didn't have the necessary equipment delivered.  Good ol' Gary the Builder Dirt Broker got back in his trusty pickup and made the rounds again.  A house site that hadn't been quite ready when he went by before was now ready to back fill a retaining wall.

These good gentleman showed up and started hauling.

They hauled.

And they hauled.

The pace was a little slow on our end, but they had to use the "whacker packer" on the dirt as it came in at the other end.  So, Ol' Mike Mulligan here was kinda chillin' as he dug.

He does kinda look like Mike Mulligan, don't you think?

The whole scene was sort of reminiscent of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, except that this Mike stayed on top of the hill and didn't dig himself into the basement.

Time for a pop quiz! 

What was the name of Mike Mulligan's steam shovel?

Hmmm?

No cheating.  I'll tell you at the end of this post.

At any rate, by the end of the second day and the 54th dump truck load of dirt, these nice folks  trucks belched (politely) and declared that they had a gracious sufficiency.

(They're southern folk -- that's what you say!)

Problem was, we still had all this dirt yet to dig:

So, who do you think came riding to the rescue in his white truck named Silver?

That's right!  Gary the Builder Dirt Broker found another site - a commercial site - that needed good compactable red dirt to top off their grading job. Doesn't this look like the finest compactable red dirt that money can buy?  And if it's free -- just bring your own truck -- doesn't it become even more desirable?  Yes!

So, by Friday, we had 5 trucks coming and going hauling somewhere around 80 or 90 truck loads away.  That kept ol' Mike Mulligan and his trusty **Mary Ann** busy all day.

We probably still have more loads to haul off, but tomorrow, we will shape up the backyard and do some calculations to see how much dirt we need and how much we still have left.

Now time to check your answers.  How many of you had Mary Ann as your answer?  You can post it in the comments below.  If you had a boy's name as the answer, you have some remedial reading to do!

Down in the Dumps

Finally, today there was a dump truck on the lot.

And there was another (this one looks a little worse for the wear).

In fact there were 3 dump trucks, as promised, lined up and waiting to be loaded with dirt.

But there seems to be a problem.

The dump truck is much, much too small for the trac hoe.

What has happened?

I think I know:

Like the hard red clay

Baking in the Georgia sun,

 I have -at last- cracked.

A little haiku for you as I wait to see if we will actually be able to bring real dump trucks out to the site tomorrow and dig a real basement.