7 July 2018

Larry, Victor, Karl, and Trey got here just before 8:30 (this being Saturday morning, they allowed themselves a late start) to form the two 11¼″ curbs (north and east sides of the building) and the two 31½″ “walls” (south and west sides – where the barn juts into the side of the slope).  The Goodro’s truck arrived at 9 bearing 10 pieces of 5/4 x 6 x 12′ pressure treated lumber for the wood walkway.  I had the truck go around to the backyard to unload, thereby testing the strength of the final section of wood walkway put in back in May.  The walkway moved not a bit as the truck drove over it (twice)!  Meanwhile, back at the barn-build site, all was going too smoothly (have we heard that phrase before?), with most of the inner walls in place, when Larry remembered that he needed to put bentonite water stop in the bottom of the forms.  That material swells in contact with water, thereby sealing the seam between the curbs / walls and the concrete slab.  Nothing for it but to take down the inner wall forms, lay down the water stop, and put the forms back up.  Did I mention that the hardest part of putting up concrete forms is aligning the form ties with the inner wall form tie holes?  There’s a real trick to that process but, even though Larry is a master former, it’s still a hard job.  As the forms were going up, Victor checked the diagonal and found that they were ⅟₁₆″ out of square.  Not too shabby!!!!  By just after noon the forms were ready for concrete, minus the wood electrical outlet boxes that I need to install inside the two walls.  Spent the afternoon moving wood walkway boards to achieve the optimal ³/₁₆″ spacing, getting the third section finished.

 

6 July 2018

After seven days of watering, pulled off the HydraCure^® membrane to find a beautiful (and uncracked) concrete slab.  Using my angle grinder, cut the rebar pins down to their proper sizes, i.e., 9½″ for the curbs and 29½″ for the walls.  As new concrete does not bond with concrete that has already set, those pins will keep the curbs / walls from moving laterally (or vertically, for that matter) on the floor slab.  After a brutal week of 90°+ air temperatures, the lake water temperature is up to 84°, the warmest that I have ever observed.

29 June 2018

The Long Ridge crew (Victor Fifield, Kyle, Karl, Ryan, and Trey Hood) arrived promptly at 7:30, with the first (of two) Cararra’s concrete trucks getting here at 8.  By 9:30, 12 cubic yards of 4,000 psi concrete were in the forms.  Victor and Ryan stayed until 2:30 to do the final finish work.  End result is a nice smooth floor.  Final step was to put HydaCure^® membrane over the new concrete, which I will have to soak with water three times a day for the next week.  The concept here is that if the concrete is kept wet then it will cure evenly and not crack.  Good concept!

 

27 June 2018

Doing a reverse spin on Murphy’s Law, Chree and I did not take her car down to Brandon yesterday afternoon to drop it off for a scheduled brake job, figuring that would ensure that Long Ridge would get started on forming the barn concrete slab first thing this morning.  Sure enough, Larry Kaufmann called at 7 to say he and his crew would be here in an hour.  So Chree and I scrambled to get her car down to the shop.  On the way back to Fern Lake, we picked up a young lady hitchhiker (yes, in Vermont, people still get about with their thumbs).  She wanted to go up to Brandon Gap to continue her through hike on the Long Trail.  Thinking we didn’t have enough time to drive up there and back, we dropped her off in Goshen and hurried back to the house.  Big mistake!  If we’d driven the extra distance, Larry would have arrived early.  Because we hurried home, he and his guys (Kyle Cram, Karl Kaufmann, and Ryan Sweeney) didn’t show up until 9:30.  By just after noon they had installed the concrete forms for the barn thickened edge slab, put down an anti-moisture barrier of 6 mill poly, laid down a layer of 6″ steel mesh, and put in two runs of #4 rebar (reinforcement for the thickened edge).  Knowing that the building footprint had moved somewhat (again!) when the forms were put up, went out after lunch to verify that the electrical conduits still were properly located.  Good thing I checked!  Moving the building meant that each conduit would have come up through the concrete precisely under a wall stud… a big no-no.  So spent a half hour wrestling the conduits into positions where they will protrude into the wall cavities exactly halfway between studs.  Oh, the joys of being your own building designer!

25 June 2018

Liam Murphy arrived first thing and pulled the accumulated radon test data out of his machine.  Great news!  The highest sample was .7 pCi/L and the average of the hourly samples over the long weekend was .2 pCi/L.  With the Vermont State Health Department recommended maximum being 4.0 pCi/L, we are no longer glowing in the dark.  Major procurement run to Lowes in South Burlington this morning for much of the electrical paraphernalia that the barn will need.  Upon return, reinstalled a 20 amp GFI outlet and associated circuit breaker on the outdoor pedestal where our main electrical breaker is located… which just happens to be in close proximity to the barn build site.  Larry Kaufmann called this evening with a tale of woe, the bottom line of which is that he and his crew won’t be here to frame and pour the concrete until after July 4^th.

24 June 2018

I have GOT to stop waking up!  No, really!  This time zero-dark-thirty reveille came with the realization that the design for the barn storage loft (and the stairs leading thereto) just wasn’t going to work because of a conflict with the beams that will be holding up the ceiling joists.  Bother!  So spent much of the morning figuring out a new design that would work, albeit with the bottom of the stairs not in close proximity to the people door, as I had wanted from the get go.  Oh, well!  That done, built four electrical outlet “junction boxes” out of ½″ pressure treated plywood.  I like my outlets to be standardized (Mr. Type A here) with their tops 18″ above the floor, but two of the concrete curbs (on the up slope west and south sides of the building) will be 34¾″ high, so those “boxes” with an 18″ length of ½″ PVC conduit sticking out the top, will have to be placed inside the forms before the concrete for those two walls is poured.

22 June 2018

Liam Murphy came by at 8:30 and set up his short-term radon testing device in the utility room.  That device will sample the air once an hour for the next three days.  Stay tuned for results…  Late morning met Tammy Walsh (and her stone wall building crew) over at Steve Ingram’s where I traded a nice bottle of Riesling for quick use of her plate compactor.  Not only is compacting stone much easier with the machine, the stone ends up much firmer than with a hand tamp… no surprise.  In fact, after a thorough beating, the barn floor elevation will end up being 1½″ lower than I had planned originally… which is a change in a good direction.  En route to picking 20 pounds of strawberries in the hot sun (I now have much stronger respect for migrant farm workers), stopped by Green Mountain Electric (where else?) to get another 1″ PVC coupling.  Finished the conduit run upon return to Fern Lake.