How do you like my self-portrait shadow?  Sometimes we see photos in places we least expect to see them... and at times you could never duplicate again.  Shirley says this is a "selfie."

You can see tire treads in the shadow from a huge crane truck that came to deliver our truss joists and beams.

And when I saw this huge truck and trailer that was 65 feet long at the front gate, I knew that there was no way he could get anywhere close to the construction site.  I took Sean, the driver for a walk up the driveway to our house and he just shook his head.  They should never have sent the load on a truck of his size.  He also had a pallet of trusses for a job near Langford... and neither of us got our product delivered on Friday.

I called Home Hardware here on Mayne Island and asked if they might be able to help us with a smaller delivery truck.  Yes they could... but their truck was out doing deliveries right at the moment.  They were not sure when it would be back.

In the meantime I helped Sean back his truck and trailer off Heck Hill... which took the better part of an hour.  It was so good to get that rig back on level ground at the bottom.  As we waited and time kept slipping away, an anxious truck driver kept telling me that he had to be on the 5 pm ferry home.

So I called Home Hardware again and Rob suggested we unload the product in their yard and they would bring it up next week.  Sean jumped all over it... and I headed home for a late, late lunch.

Now for the weekly construction update.

Foundation 1 is totally complete, including the repair of the garage floor and parging on the column.  Notice that last week we had 18 bags of cement on the floor here... today there are less than two.

Columns 2 and 4 are completed and backfilled... ready for the beams.  I used a weaker cement mix in the dirt to backfill #4 in an extra wet mix and it really tightened up around the foundation... almost as good as concrete and perfect for backfilling.  I will be inlaying rock and mortar to finish up to the pavement level... but this won't happen until after the framing is completed and I can do this kind of thing on a rainy day then.

Column 3 is also totally completed and I before I added the top half I cut in a 1/4" drip irrigation line to 18" above grade so if Shirley puts a flower pot beside the post it will have drip irrigation on a time zone.  Then I parged both columns 3 and 4 on the bottom for a cleaner look.

Foundation 5 is done ready for floor joists and walls.  I cleaned up the bottom of this crawl space with gravel and levelled it so if we ever have to work there after it will be cleaner.  Note the Simpson bracket attached to the anchor bolt on the left... it will attach to a 3-ply 2x6 post in the wall which will carry one end of a 36-foot LVL beam that is 5-1/4 x 16 inches.

See how nice the concrete conforms to the paved driveway?  Pretty nice, eh?  The 2x6 sole plate is tight to the inside of the foundation allowing 2-1/2 inches ledge for rock facing on the closet walls.

This week I finished the concrete footing and foundation for #6... the stairs with room under for recycle.  Sunday we plan to pour the floor in this area... and we will then retire the cement mixer for a while and go full throttle into framing.  The concrete work will be all done!

Foundation #7... the pantry, is also ready for joists, floor and walls.  I also brought a bit of gravel with the tractor and backfilled the lowest part of this crawl space to clean it up and level things a bit.

I also added two more anchor bolts on Friday.  The engineer was here again on Thursday and caught an oversight I made.  I failed to see that one section of the wall closest to the entrance needed to have anchor bolts on 16 inch centre... not 32 inches like all the rest.  So Shirley picked up a couple of wedge anchors in Victoria on Thursday afternoon and I drilled into the concrete and pounded them in... then tightened the nut.  Works great!

Shirley posted several photos of the work in progress during the week.  Check out her blog... click here.

Nest week you will see lots of wood and a few beams set in place.  Hopefully we can make some serious progress.

Construction Update September 2, 2011

As I was putting my tools away the sunset on Friday evening begged me to grab my camera and capture this moment.  It has been a really good week with lots of progress on the project.

The black hole in the garage wall is a hole I cut earlier in the week at the exact spot where the major beam goes into the workshop.  I then ran a string at the correct height between the garage and house and squared the new building at approximately 92 inches above garage floor... which is where the bottom of the main beam will rest.  I had to trim off a few rebars that were too high so the beam can set on the top of the concrete.  When I squared the building I was able to confirm that the distance between the beams was 22'  8" outside to outside in the main area where there is no cantilever sections.  This gave me great comfort, as I had ordered the LVL laminated beams and truss joists... and for the most part they are going to come 23 feet... and I can then trim them to fit.

When we first conceived expanding the studio over a part of the garage, we thought we would have metal or a wooden posts to hold everything up.  But after talking to engineers about the project, Brian, my friend in Phoenix suggested I consider a concrete post with rebar inside.  As this soon became the most advantageous system we forged ahead with it.  But when I went to put the rebar cage into the hole I first realized that there was less than 8 inches between the overhead door tracks on each side of the common wall.  Once I removed a section of the wall it became very clear that I could not run an 18" or even a 13" concrete post between those overhead door tracks.  So in consultation with Ritchie Smith, my engineer, we came up with a modification at the top.  It meant bending the 5/8" rebars near to the top and making a notch in the post for the door tracks.  These are things that come up that one never imagined would be a problem.  Hence, I am making the concrete post a full 18" of concrete up to the bottom of the overhead door tracks.  The whole place may fall down, but this post is huge and has a great foundation.

Friday Shirley made a gravel run for me... and I hope that will finish off the concrete stage.  Along with the Navy Jack she brought another six bags of cement... which brings our total to date to 50 bags, if I use all that I have recently purchased.  So far 32 bags have been used.

If you look closely behind the bags of cement there is the 18" x 18" form for column #1 in the garage.  We poured the bottom half, up to the cleat on the form this past Tuesday... and today I added the top half without stripping off the bottom... and we will put concrete in the balance on Sunday.  It will not be easy to get this one done since I have to work between the existing trusses in the garage.

You can see column #2 in the background.  We also poured concrete up to 6" above grade on Tuesday.  This is the rock ledge height for this column.  From here to the top the concrete will be 13" square, leaving me 2.5" for rock facing.

We also poured the bottom part of the column #4 on Tuesday, which matches #3 for height to rock ledge.

On Thursday when I was excavating for #6 (the stair foundation) I dumped three loads of dirt removed from there into #2.  I then had Shirley come with a garden hose and I brought several loads of fill dirt that I had stock piled and we completely backfilled #2.  I doubt there will be much settling as Shirley really soaked it good and I threw in lots of rocks.  Does it ever feel good to have that huge excavation backfilled... and we even dressed the top with crusher chips... my favourite road and yard gravel topping.

Again you can see a yellow string at the top of the columns... this is part of the squaring the building exercise.  The laser level on the tripod makes finding the correct height of the column pretty easy

It won't take much to backfill #4 on Sunday.  We developed a good solution to prevent settling of the driveway, which has some serious undercuts to fill in.  We found using between 1 to 1.5 shovels of cement to 15 shovels of dirt and rock makes a very solid backfill... with no shrinkage.  It worked really good on #3 the week before.

No. 3 was about 40 inches of backfill and using the reduced cement formula in a soupy mix not only filled in all the cavities, but there has been no noticeable shrinkage.

The nice pile of gravel in the background will go into foundation #5 and #6... plus the tops of the columns... and then we are done with concrete.

I finished forming the walls of the foundation in #6 this week and by Sunday evening I hope this will have concrete in it.  The cross bracing looks kind of honky... but with only one side formed with plywood and the other side dirt walls, I had to come up with some way to keep the walls straight under the pressure of concrete.

Foundation #6 is for the stairs and the wall adjacent to the house that will support the second story walls and roof rafters.

I removed a few more boards of siding in two places this week... where 3" x 8" posts will go to carry the wall and roof load.

Each rebar that attached to existing house has epoxy in the hole.  Two horizontal footing bars... and two vertical foundation bars.

I took half a dozen photos of this footing and foundation preparations and emailed them to my engineer... hoping to hear back with a green light so I can pour concrete footing here this weekend.  My concrete mixing helper goes back to school after the weekend.

The last one... #7 foundation for the pantry came out really good.  My careful cutting of plywood to follow the contours of the pavement payed off.  My home made anchor blots worked out just fine.  I am now ready to set up the floor joists... but I still await another quote so that I can decide who will be supplying the lumber and plywood.

This coming week on September 8 we are scheduled to get delivery of the beams and TGI's.  It will be interesting to see if they can be delivered on schedule. Soon or very soon we will be done with concrete and on to bigger and better things... but without a good foundation the rest would be in vain.

I enjoy telling people that this house was built according to the Bible... it has been built on the solid rock!  ...and we have cut no corners on the excavation, concrete or steel.  So we expect that our new addition is designed to withstand the high winds, heavy snow load and even earthquakes, if they should happen.  Fortunately we do not get hurricanes here... even though some days it sure feels like it!

But I did talk to a lady at the stock brokers office this week who said her name was Irene.  I jokingly asked her if she got much abuse because of the hurricane last weekend... and she said she sure did... it comes with the territory.

City of Victoria Tour

Just over a week ago we used a Groupon 'City of Victoria' bus tour... and we saw and learned several new things about our home city.

After driving around through Chinatown and past several sites the tour bus took us to the top of Tolmie Mountain, where we could see a fabulous 360 degrees.

The crane silhouetted against the ocean is for the construction of the Oak Bay Beach Hotel.

The island in the foreground with vertical cliffs is James Island... and behind it is Pender and Saturna Islands.  We had hoped to be able to see Mayne Island... but Pender, which is higher blocks our view from Victoria.

I enjoyed seeing these girls having fun capturing creative photos at the parking lot on the top of Mt. Tolmie.

We have been fascinated by the Garry Oaks in this area... and Mt. Tolmie has the largest group of the most beautiful protected specimens we have ever seen.

We drove thru the most exclusive areas of Uplands and Oak Bay.

This plant sculpture was located on the corner near the Empress hotel.

The Butchart Gardens have this antique car in front of the Empress Hotel.

Tour buses stop in front of the Empress... a great spot for tourists to take some cool photos of the capital buildings and inner harbour.

It is no accident that the Butchart Gardens is the most visited tourist attraction of Victoria.

Victoria is a city of flowers.  Over 25,000 hanging flower baskets are hung on lamp posts thru out the city... and many, many flower beds.

The inner harbour is always busy.  Water taxi's and tour boats leave from here to go whale watching.  Ferry's leave from here to the USA... and float planes are landing and leaving all the time.

As we headed back to the truck, we were drawn to this orca sculpture.  In 2004 the BC Lions Society did a fundraiser and had 50 different artists decorate identical orca's, which were displayed all around the city.  At the end of the campaign these were all sold by auction and brought in between $3,000 to $28,000.  It was a very successful charity project.  You can see the different orcas here.

We look forward now to going back to Victoria and checking out some of the cool things we learned about that we didn't know even existed... and we will keep you posted of our new findings.

Deepening and Widening the Column Excavations

Over a week ago I worked on this No. 1 excavation... widening it on each side, to get the maximum possible footing size.  Then I twisted my brain around how best to layout the rebar.  To go straight with the world here didn't work as good as going straight with the biggest rock.

Each bar has been drilled into the rock on one end and after blowing out the hole with an air compressor I put a generous amount of epoxy in and then pushed the rebar into the hole.

The number "1" is on a stick that I set up to guide me in knowing when there is enough concrete to make the concrete footing 12 inches thick.

In most footing preparations one sets up forms at the proper height.  If you want 12" deep footing you make the forms 12" high.  But here there are no forms except the earth walls of the excavation, and no easy way to know when the concrete is deep enough.

So I came up with a simple tool to help me.  As I am placing the concrete in the hole the bottom of this stick is 12 inches off the bottom of the excavation... 16 inches below the garage floor.  I can move it around all sides easily to check when placing the concrete to insure I have the right thickness of footing.

Ritchie Smith. Hoel Engineering, told me that I needed to make hole No.2 a little wider and deeper than I had already.  So, I made it a full foot wider than he told me... and an extra 6 inches deeper.

There was this rock in one corner that was too big for me to lift out with the tractor.  Trust me I tried... but then decided that it would be easier to leave it there and just pop off the top of the rock.

So with my 12" rock saw I made a series of cuts about 2-1/2 inches apart.

It almost looks like sliced bread... however the rock doesn't cut as easy as most bread!

I then take my heavy rock hammer and one inch chisel and break each slice of rock off.

Once that layer is removed I did another series of cuts and this picture shows breaking the final layer off.

I was able to take off a full 8 inches and now can run the rebar grid each way right into the corner without any hassle.  The horizontal white board gives me the top of footing guide again, making it easy to get the concrete 12 inches thick overall.

I appreciate having an engineer who explains the reasons for criteria. This gave me the choice of going a little deeper and wider, which is better able to withstand the uplift and twisting in the event of an earthquake.

Hole no. 3 was such a hard dig to just get it 22 inches deep initially, I soaked the bottom of this hole a couple of times.  It made the digging a lot easier... but it seemed like it made the rocks grow!  Ritchie asked me to increase this hole to 4 feet by 6.5 feet and 36 inches deep.  

I needed to use the tractor at least 5 times to lift heavy rocks out of this hole... and you can see I was working pretty late in the day as Shirley had to use flash to capture this shot.

There were also lots of smaller rocks that I could dig up and lift out by hand... some will be used in future rock walls and rock facing.

I never realized when I started how deep that this hole would finally end up.  I just kept digging and kept pulling out rocks until I reached one rock that was bigger than my John Deere could even budge.

I drilled into the rock and pounded in a short rebar to prevent my chain from slipping off the rock... but this was just too much rock for either of us to handle.  So I ended up digging lower and was able to set a full pattern of rebar at about 52 inches below pavement.  This will now tie the huge rock into the footing, providing more weight to the foundation.

My next task was to build the rebar columns that will be poured full of concrete. We tackled the toughest one first... this one had 16 vertical bars, 12 horizontal wraps 11 inches square and 13 -  4" x 11" wraps in between.

Here the engineer specified the rebar layout showing the difference between pad 3 and pads 1, 2 and 4.

To bend the horizontal wraps I needed to make this jig by welding a couple of short rebars to an angle iron and attach it the workbench.  I was lucky to have guests coming from Victoria who brought me a new package of welding rods since I could not buy any here on Mayne Island.

With a stop set at 11 inches it is easy to make all the square wraps the same size using a short piece of steel pipe as a bending handle.

We learned how to tie rebar in Mexico, so made a couple of these hooks out of 1/4 inch scrap wire I found at Home Hardware here on Mayne Island.

I doubt that there are very many women in this country who know how to tie rebar... but Shirley's help was much appreciated this week.

There is more than 240 wire ties in this single column... and we have another three to make up next week.

With this column weighing over 240 pounds, it would take more than me and Shirley to lift it into the hole.  Enter John Deere to the rescue!

Once in the hole I tied the hooks on the bottom to the footing rebar and then plumbed it and braced the column both ways. This one is now ready for concrete.... but I first must get my building permit and get the Regional District Building Inspector to give me a green light.