*Be warned, this is boring if you are not into rocks and machines!*
Engineers recommended that our house be built on piers (poles), or essentially "floating" above the soil to prevent settling or shifting. So we needed to drill out 43 piers that went at least 6 feet into the bedrock layer! Then fill them with rebar posts, then fill with concrete. These piers ended up being some as deep as 21 feet deep!
These are the drilling auger trucks. This is the bigger one they had to send for, since the first one on the job wasn't making it through the hard rocks.
Here's the auger when it's drilling down into the ground. The drill bit is as big as his head! The NOISE was incredible. Metal drilling rock... lovely!
After the holes were drilled, three long pieces of rebar stuck all the way down into each on of the 43 holes.
Then fill with concrete and let form. Let's hope the piers are in the right spot... or the City will make us re-do them!
This guy was on the site for the whole day (10 hours). We thought he may be looking at notes or plans or something. If you zoom in on the picture, he's doing a CROSSWORD PUZZLE. Who is this guy anyhow? Well turns out, we found out who "he" was about 3 weeks later when the soil engineer invoice came with an "extra" supervision charge for $$$$. WE have to pay this guy $55/hour plus travel charges to make sure everything was done right. Otherwise the company won't sign off on the inspection. What a crock. So we'll send the check, we have to, but I'm also sending this picture with our payment.
It was QUITE the process! Noisy, tons of trucks, workers, inspectors, and did I mention NOISY? The weirdest thing was all this was happening on day 3 of construction, we were paying all of these people, trucks, etc. and it was a sure sign we are doing this project!
LOL! You'll die to know that was Dan's job in California - "concrete inspector". All he did was show up and do nothing. At the end of the day he wrote a few sentence report about how it went. Sure, he made sure they didn't pour when the temperature was too low or if the ground wasn't compacted enough. That doesn't justify an entire day's work at $75 an hour though, does it?
ReplyDeleteIt sucks to know that he is going back to school to get a degree so that he can make less money. At least he won't have to sit out in the sun all day...