Howell Cabin

Siggy joined Eliot and me for today's expedition. Lunch in the shade of the forest. We completed the Quadlock track, and then began installing the first course of foam form blocks. Lego, Duplo, QUADLOCK!

This weekend was punctuated with little rain squalls, just long enough to get us to stop work on the foundation and move up to the shop before it would break out in sun and cook off the moisture. Saturday we got the forms stripped off the footer. Hey look at us! We made this thing out of concrete!  I was the only one here for the pour on Thursday, so I bore the responsibility of carving all of our initials into the footer. Sunday we carefully re-leveled our batter boards and measured out the outside dimensions of the stem wall, checking for accuracy and square. Then we transferred the string outline down to the footer with a plumb bob. Finally we got a chance to use our fancy new roto hammer to drill the concrete and screw in some of the metal track for the Quadlock.

The boom truck showed up at 9am, an hour ahead of the cement, to be certain they could squeeze up the driveway. Here's Tye driving the boom with his remote control. Here's a speedy time-lapse of the pour. Here's the completed product, setting up.

On Tuesday, I arranged for a county inspection of the footer form, a state inspection of the electrical ground (that didn't come together), and a private concrete contractor to come check my work to see if it's sturdy. Justin, the guy from the county, was there when I got there, and he said "looks good!" He hung around and gave me some useful advice on how to vent the crawl space. Wildlife interlude! Todd, the private contractor, showed up and thought our forms were pretty passable. He and his buddy had a few suggestions to make the rebar a little more rigid, so I hung around Tuesday to brace things up a little tighter, and get the cast-in-place post bases rigged where they go. Todd said "let's get some cement here!", and started making calls. Cement is coming Thursday!

Friday night we got started laying plastic fabric into the forms Saturday we tied rebar to dobies - little bricks that keep it from sinking to the bottom of the footer. We added spreaders (really, keep-from-spread-ers) across the top, and hung stub dowels (vertical rebar) off of those. Sunday we continued the work, building boxes for the post bases, and rigging up jigs to hold the cast-in-place metal post supports.