29 May 2014
Wink pulled up just
after 7 to trade Jimmy’s “small” grade-all excavator (John Deere 120C) for the
JD160C, needed on another job. Spent another hour moving stone around in the
cellar hole until Jimmy got here with his skid-steer and compactors. The two of
us then spent two more hours rearranging and compacting stone so that, by 10
o’clock, the cellar floor was back to the same condition it was in last
Thursday, albeit now with a bunch of PVC pipes sticking up through the surface. Wink brought us a load of sand that Jimmy and
I spread over top the stone… Jimmy spreading (with his excavator and
skid-steer) and raking (‘cause Jimmy is just as good at raking a smooth, level
surface as he is at everything else, i.e., fabulous), me shoveling, checking
grade with his laser leveler, and compacting.
By lunchtime the cellar was ready for polyethylene sheeting and seven
Kubota payments worth of polystyrene foam.
In the 23 days since Jimmy dug the cellar hole, many rocks have fallen
off the banks and fetched up against the foundation footers. After lunch Jimmy
and I moved all those rocks out of the way, by hand. Then we hand shoveled a trench next to the
footers. Into that trench Jimmy placed a
layer of stone using his JD120C. Because
the bucket can be tilted in any direction (which is why they call it a
grade-all), Jimmy could literally pour stone wherever he wanted it. Beyond tricky!!!! Jimmy then put 4″ perimeter drain pipes (aka
weeping tiles) in the footer trenches, bedded them so that water would flow
from a high point in the middle of the house east side towards two termination
points at either end of the west side.
He then poured another foot of stone over the pipes. I got plenty of exercise wielding an idiot
stick to keep the stone level. Over top
of all that stone we spread filter fabric, which will keep dirt from leaching
into and clogging the stone and perimeter drains. I took Jimmy over to his shop on Upper Plains
Road so that he could bring a dump truck (loaded with more sand) over here,
ready to move the stockpile of backfill dirt from next to the driveway down to
the house foundation. But that’s
tomorrow’s story… After a heavy day of
hot and dirty work, the lake was as refreshing as always. So was the Sam Adams Boston Lager!
