Happy 4th of July!
It's been a crazy couple of days so I'll try to catch up. Wednesday morning we headed out to Lowe's for our supply run. Unfortunately, by the time we got back to the land and ate lunch, the rain was about to start. I headed off to do a little grocery shopping and Jim was able to work just a little bit in the footers before it rained. So it was a short work day. But that was okay because Jim had things to get ready for our day on Thursday - our road trip to Vermont.
The forecast was for more rain on Thursday so Jim had set up a meeting with his new Nudura rep at the concrete company. His old rep who he really liked and had worked out a lot of details with, left the company with no notice. Jim had only communicated with the new person by phone and email - and wasn't real impressed and in fact was wondering if that is the direction he should go for the foundation walls. Jim always prefers to meet in person to discuss these issues, so the meeting was set up and off we went.
We first stopped at the electric supply store to pick up some things for the meter work. They had most things except for some conduit that Jim needs. The concrete company was actually in New Hampshire but just over the border from Vermont. We had to travel across the state of Vermont - it took us about 3 hours to get there. Probably a half hour from our destination, we passed another electric supply store, so we planned to stop there on the way back home after the meeting to see if they had the right conduit.
The meeting with the Nudura people went really well - Jim met with them for about an hour and a half. It turned out that the person that Jim had been communicating was in the meeting but he was not the actual person that Jim will be working with. The new person was very knowledgeable and Jim feels he'll be a good resource. Jim got all of his questions answered satisfactorily and the guy is working up a quote for us.
Afterwards, we stopped at the electric supply store, picked up the right conduit, and Jim loaded them into the car. Because they are 10' pieces, he lowered the back window of the 4Runner and put them through the car into the front seat area. We had passed through a little ski resort town on our way to the concrete place and we had said we would stop and get an ice cream cone when we were finished. We parked on the street and Jim rearranged the conduit so it would lay on the dashboard and fit in the car so we could lock up. However, when he went to put the back window up - nothing. It wouldn't go up. He moved the car into a store parking lot and did his best to troubleshoot but nothing worked. And then we found out this little town didn't even have ice cream!
We got back on the road coming home - and had to stop and take a picture of this sign for all of our Ohio family and friends who always ask us if we've seen any bears! Thankfully, we haven't and none crossed our paths this trip either.
It's been a crazy couple of days so I'll try to catch up. Wednesday morning we headed out to Lowe's for our supply run. Unfortunately, by the time we got back to the land and ate lunch, the rain was about to start. I headed off to do a little grocery shopping and Jim was able to work just a little bit in the footers before it rained. So it was a short work day. But that was okay because Jim had things to get ready for our day on Thursday - our road trip to Vermont.
The forecast was for more rain on Thursday so Jim had set up a meeting with his new Nudura rep at the concrete company. His old rep who he really liked and had worked out a lot of details with, left the company with no notice. Jim had only communicated with the new person by phone and email - and wasn't real impressed and in fact was wondering if that is the direction he should go for the foundation walls. Jim always prefers to meet in person to discuss these issues, so the meeting was set up and off we went.
We first stopped at the electric supply store to pick up some things for the meter work. They had most things except for some conduit that Jim needs. The concrete company was actually in New Hampshire but just over the border from Vermont. We had to travel across the state of Vermont - it took us about 3 hours to get there. Probably a half hour from our destination, we passed another electric supply store, so we planned to stop there on the way back home after the meeting to see if they had the right conduit.
The meeting with the Nudura people went really well - Jim met with them for about an hour and a half. It turned out that the person that Jim had been communicating was in the meeting but he was not the actual person that Jim will be working with. The new person was very knowledgeable and Jim feels he'll be a good resource. Jim got all of his questions answered satisfactorily and the guy is working up a quote for us.
Afterwards, we stopped at the electric supply store, picked up the right conduit, and Jim loaded them into the car. Because they are 10' pieces, he lowered the back window of the 4Runner and put them through the car into the front seat area. We had passed through a little ski resort town on our way to the concrete place and we had said we would stop and get an ice cream cone when we were finished. We parked on the street and Jim rearranged the conduit so it would lay on the dashboard and fit in the car so we could lock up. However, when he went to put the back window up - nothing. It wouldn't go up. He moved the car into a store parking lot and did his best to troubleshoot but nothing worked. And then we found out this little town didn't even have ice cream!
We got back on the road coming home - and had to stop and take a picture of this sign for all of our Ohio family and friends who always ask us if we've seen any bears! Thankfully, we haven't and none crossed our paths this trip either.
As we were driving, my Red Cross emergency weather app kept going off telling us about a horrible storm moving through our home area and across the whole area we were traveling. It finally hit us - and it was a bad one. Horrible torrential downpours, hail, lightning - and the whole time our back window was down! And there was no garage awaiting us at home either. We stopped at Home Depot when we got close to home and bought a tarp. When Jim got back in the car, he said that people in line were buying pumps for flooded basements so our back window problem didn't seem quite as bad. Thankfully, the rain slowed down by the time we got home and Jim was able to get the tarp over the back window. Although it was apparent our power had gone out, it was at least on when we got home for which we were very grateful.
Unfortunately, some really bad news awaited Jim when he got to the land this morning. The torrential downpours caused major damage to all of our footer work. Although Jim had dammed up the area at the top to try and avoid this problem, all of the rain coming down the hill managed to find a low spot, created a trench - the water poured down the hill and then just followed our forms all the way down.
The bottom left of this picture kind of shows where the water broke through and you can see the pathway of the water through the footers.
The water just totally destroyed the step areas...
...leaving a giant mess that will require a lot of money for concrete to fill in. This area was so beautiful that it is just sickening to see what happened. All of the footers will require lots and lots of hand digging all of the extra dirt out to try and get them back into shape again.
Jim also had the turnout in much better shape after the last big storm - most of it survived but again, a low spot caused the water to create a massive cave in, sweeping tons of dirt over the edge and into the woods.
The ever-resilient Jim decided to work on the meter pedestal since the footers were too wet to do anything with today. He got to use the new saw that Kyle & Julia bought him last year for the first time to cut the stainless steeling mounting brackets for the boxes.
All attached and ready for the boxes!
He also came up with a plan to hopefully avoid any more issues from big rains like this. He had to move dirt from the big piles next to the site so he can get his excavator up close to the site.
He's going to dig a ditch to divert water away from the site completely - so that's going to be a work in progress over the next day or so.
So...once again, lots of damage from a storm. We don't have rain here very often but the two big storms that we had really caused a lot of grief. I'm thankful for my very strong husband - he's able to pick himself up, come up with a new plan, and move on.
No comments:
Post a Comment