Happy New Year to all. I'm in the cold clutches of New England for the holidays. Right now it's snowing again - between the 14 inches we got just before Christmas while Carol was here, the 8 inches we got while I was up in Vermont with my son, and now, back in Connecticut, we're getting a few additional inches of the white stuff....I've just about had my fill and I am longing for Ocracoke's balmy 40's. It's been mostly in the teens and twentys, but I did see (feel) a touch of below zero in Vermont, just to remind me of what that's like.
My brother and I went to look at a job this morning - building a screen porch onto a house we built many years ago for my good friends Ed and Shirley - My Favorite Customers Of All Time. (Marcy and Lou, you are a very very close second and I hope you-all will get to meet in March). We are looking at getting the job started in pretty short order and questioning how deep the frost is relative to getting a backhoe in to dig for footings....a different set of questions than we ask in Ocracoke, eh?
We do have a historic project going here as well - it's funded by the State of CT Historic Commission and involves restoring the roof structure of an old two-story building that has been community owned - something like a grange hall- for over 150 years. As our Ocracoke project is, this is done to Dept. of Interior Specifications, but this one involves also an architect and an engineer who jointly wrote the specs...and way way over engineered the structure. But, what to say? On behalf of the guys who built it originally, we have gotten a few laughs over the extensive engineering language specifying the modulus of elasticity/bending strength required for the oak pegs!
Our guys have been starting in the mornings by chipping ice off the scaffolding and ladders. I have to say I don't miss that, but I have to admit that I do miss this old New England architecture.
See you soon.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Up She Comes - lots of pics...
We started jacking on Monday afternoon - we had 22 jacks set on the concrete footers we poured last week and we had cribbing set up and more ready to go. We lifted about a foot on Tuesday, took a rain day off on Wednesday and gained the remaining 18 inches on Thursday. Friday we tweaked and leveled and re-set cribbing as needed. So now we're up above the FEMA recommended flood elevation by a couple of inches, and more level than the house has been in decades.
Everything went well. It turns out we spent way more time setting cribbing and re-setting jacks than actually jacking. We went up in 1 1/2" increments and found that, for the sake of safety, we could only make about three of those lifts before it made sense to raise and re-block the jacks. As we went up, we added blocks to the cribbing and continually replaced 2x blocks with 6x6 and when we could, we replaced the 6x6 with 8x8, which kept the cribbing stable as it came up.
The only glitch was that three or four of the footers tipped because the jacks weren't set square in the middle. There is a reason for that - having to do with the layout of the piers....but the end result was the jacks were off center of the footers. To correct, we simply moved those jacks to the back edge of the sill beam, set a level on the footers to monitor the problem and kept on jacking. Pics follow:
Everything went well. It turns out we spent way more time setting cribbing and re-setting jacks than actually jacking. We went up in 1 1/2" increments and found that, for the sake of safety, we could only make about three of those lifts before it made sense to raise and re-block the jacks. As we went up, we added blocks to the cribbing and continually replaced 2x blocks with 6x6 and when we could, we replaced the 6x6 with 8x8, which kept the cribbing stable as it came up.
The only glitch was that three or four of the footers tipped because the jacks weren't set square in the middle. There is a reason for that - having to do with the layout of the piers....but the end result was the jacks were off center of the footers. To correct, we simply moved those jacks to the back edge of the sill beam, set a level on the footers to monitor the problem and kept on jacking. Pics follow:
Starting to lift
Down Under
Coming up
Workin' the jacks J Kidwell photo
Now it's getting roomy under there J Kidwell photo
Cribbing and jacks - nearly there J Kidwell photo
Just Starting
Making Progress
OK - that's it J Kidwell photo
Watch out, the first step's a doozie! J Kidwell photo
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Cement Day
To Jason and Johnny's dismay, I decided to pour the footers for piers before we jack the house up...there is some logic to jacking first and then pouring, I'll concede. That logic being: the house would be 30" higher when it comes time to dig and set 32 footing forms and when it comes time to pour 4 yards of concrete. On the other hand, and more compelling to me than easier vs harder...I now have my concrete footers to set jacks on and I'm sure it will make the jacking considerably quicker, safer and cleaner.
In the end, we spent two miserable days under the house digging and setting forms. There's about twenty inches from grade to the bottoms of the floor joists, so the work is done in a sort of contorted lying/sitting position with a sawed off shovel. Not fun, but there are worse things to have to do, like....uhh, well uhh... I'll get back to you on that.
On Thursday we poured concrete. We were dreading this task, as four yards of concrete in partially filled five gallon buckets comes to a hell of a lot of buckets ... maybe in the 150 to 200 range. But the good news is we asked around for temp help and ended up with nine of us doing the job in less than an hour. Now we're poured and Monday we start jacking.
In the end, we spent two miserable days under the house digging and setting forms. There's about twenty inches from grade to the bottoms of the floor joists, so the work is done in a sort of contorted lying/sitting position with a sawed off shovel. Not fun, but there are worse things to have to do, like....uhh, well uhh... I'll get back to you on that.
On Thursday we poured concrete. We were dreading this task, as four yards of concrete in partially filled five gallon buckets comes to a hell of a lot of buckets ... maybe in the 150 to 200 range. But the good news is we asked around for temp help and ended up with nine of us doing the job in less than an hour. Now we're poured and Monday we start jacking.
Waiting for the cement truck
Still waiting for the cement truck
Footing form with rebar and tie strap - ready to go
Yeehaw...cement time
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