15 May 2014

Drove into Goodro’s to prep and prime the 43′ 9″ W10x15 steel beam that will hold up the middle of the house Main Level.  (TMI: the W means it is a “web” beam, commonly known as an I-beam; 10 means the beam is 10 inches high; 15 means it weighs 15 pounds per lineal foot; and the beam top and bottom flanges are 4″ wide.)  So, doing the math, the beam weighs in at a svelte 671 pounds. That is an important number, as you’ll see. Four of the more stoutly built Goodro’s folks most kindly moved the beam into their (rather large) maintenance shop and set it on a couple of sturdy sawhorses for me to work on.  The beam was raw steel and slightly rusty, so sanded it down before applying a premium-quality rust-inhibiting primer paint.  In order to work on all sides of the beam, obviously I had to turn it over, which was within my abilities going from the skinny (4″) to the fat (10″) side, but was just a bit beyond my strength going the other way.  No problem!  Whenever I needed to turn the beam back upright, one of the Goodro’s folks came right over and the two of us did the he-man thing.  Got back to Fern Lake, with all vertebral disks intact, at 11:30 to find Larry, Kevin, Rick, Victor, and Scott busily erecting concrete wall forms. Early afternoon Sean stopped by to see how things were going and discuss / resolve the current crop of issues / questions.  I swear the house is on springs: yesterday Larry told me he had to raise it up an inch (due to a high spot on the footers) and today he told me he had to lower it back down an inch and a half (due to a low spot, he said, in his brain when he calculated the intersection height of the frost wall and the cellar floor).  By the end of the day the exterior side of all the wall forms were set up with their form ties inserted.  [Further TMI: form ties are a twisted metal device with a loop at each end that are used to keep the concrete forms from spreading apart as the concrete is put in.  At the bottom of an 8 foot wall, concrete exerts a force of 1,200 psi on the forms until it sets.]  I helped with the latter activity, as there is a form tie every 12″ horizontally and 20″ vertically, i.e., about 910 of those critters in them thar walls. Had a long HVAC conversation with Matt Sergeant at the close of business.  Then an even longer conversation with Chree about all the decisions recently made and forthcoming with respect to how we want the house built.  The lake temperature is up to 62°; a few more degrees and another really hot day…