4 June 2014

Woke up at 5 with the horrible realization that the house design had the steel beams in the wrong places from the perspective of both load balance and efficient use of materials.  Quickly designed a solution, but that fix potentially impacted many other facets of the house construction… including Sean’s floor joist layout.  Fired off an email to Sean at 6, asking him to boogey on over to Fern Lake ASAP.  Kevin and Victor got here just before 8 and, by 10, had dismantled the Garage frost wall concrete forms and were back over the horizon.  Sean got here at 8, then we spent a couple and a half hours looking at all the impacts of moving the beams. Bottom line is that the toilet and window in the Master Bath had to move westward, the staircase will have to slide east a few inches, and the footers for the posts supporting the long beam will have to be re-poured (which can be done the same time the cellar floor slab is poured). But, now the load on each beam is well balanced and there will be minimal wastage when we install the Main Level floor joists.  After Sean left, I got to work digging (literally by hand) the new holes for the post footers and lining them with 6 mil polyethylene sheeting.  That was done by noon.  Fortunately, the already-installed radiant floor tubing was easily rerouted around the new holes.  Called to complain about the burgeoning mosquito population and the failure of the BLSC driver to spray down this way when last he/she was in the neighborhood.  Spent most of the afternoon running errands in Middlebury and Brandon, then doing more cleaning and organizing in the woodshed / temporary workshop / underground bunker.