We laid out lines with string and Jim decided that in a couple places he wanted a little more room to work outside the footer. He was able to scrape a little bit of dirt off with the excavator but then we had to dig it all out by hand. And there are so many rocks that Jim had to take the spud bar (which weighs probably 25 pounds) and lift it up and pound it down over and over again to try and get things straight and loosened up enough that we could dig the dirt out. That really takes its toll in the heat. Plus, it was so warm and the lovely combination of dirt, sweat and sunscreen dripping into your eyes was a real treat!
And this was so scary to watch. If you look closely at this picture, in order to just scrape a few inches on the back side of this area, Jim positioned the excavator over the already-dug footer area. Which meant that when he drove over it, the excavator tipped up in back - just about made me have a heart attack! At least when he repositioned the next time, I was more prepared for it. Sometimes it's hard just watching!
However, once we got all that done we got to move onto some form work which was very exciting. The first piece of form is the most important - everything else has to build onto that. So we did lots and lots of measurements with the tape measure, laser level and old fashioned level just to be sure.
Finally got the first piece all level and set in place!
Jim wanted to compact the footer area just to make sure everything is as stable as possible. Stirred up just a little more dust and dirt!
Turned our first corner of the form!
And another birds-eye view of the site.
As you can imagine, daily clean up takes quite awhile. There are a lot of tools to gather up, put away, machines to lock down for the night, etc. Right now it's helpful because we are keeping the truck down near the site and are working out of it, so we don't have to make too many treks up and down the hill. But clean up is definitely something you have to factor in time-wise.
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