16 April 2010
The weather forecast was for showers and light rain today. Arriving back at Fern Lake from Middlebury, conditions looked reasonable, so Josh came over and we continued building and placing the footer forms. I also arranged with Tammy Walsh to come back with her loader / backhoe mid-afternoon to backfill the holes she dug on Wednesday... plus remove the large mound of dirt and rocks that Josh and I had piled in the middle of the cellar hole while installing the footer forms. Now well and truly committed to getting the job finished, it began to rain steadily, OF COURSE! But, by 1 o’clock the footer forms were in place (definitely not level, somewhat wiggly, and probably not square), the Big Feet and Sonotubes (round cardboard tubes used for forming concrete columns… and, in this case, as an extension for the Big Feet) were in position and partially backfilled, and we were soaked to the skin. During lunch a wild turkey walked by the RV. Could have used a shot of the liquid variety at that point. However, some hot soup and change of clothes soon swung the comfort-meter back into positive numbers. Tammy showed up as promised, completed the backfilling the deep holes, then spent an hour removing the dirt pile that had taken Josh and me two days to create by hand. Tammy (who is an expert on such matters) said that the 24″ wide footers should be fine. She also hired Josh to work with her doing landscaping work for the next couple of weeks.
The weather forecast was for showers and light rain today. Arriving back at Fern Lake from Middlebury, conditions looked reasonable, so Josh came over and we continued building and placing the footer forms. I also arranged with Tammy Walsh to come back with her loader / backhoe mid-afternoon to backfill the holes she dug on Wednesday... plus remove the large mound of dirt and rocks that Josh and I had piled in the middle of the cellar hole while installing the footer forms. Now well and truly committed to getting the job finished, it began to rain steadily, OF COURSE! But, by 1 o’clock the footer forms were in place (definitely not level, somewhat wiggly, and probably not square), the Big Feet and Sonotubes (round cardboard tubes used for forming concrete columns… and, in this case, as an extension for the Big Feet) were in position and partially backfilled, and we were soaked to the skin. During lunch a wild turkey walked by the RV. Could have used a shot of the liquid variety at that point. However, some hot soup and change of clothes soon swung the comfort-meter back into positive numbers. Tammy showed up as promised, completed the backfilling the deep holes, then spent an hour removing the dirt pile that had taken Josh and me two days to create by hand. Tammy (who is an expert on such matters) said that the 24″ wide footers should be fine. She also hired Josh to work with her doing landscaping work for the next couple of weeks.
