We continued those jobs when I joined Jim before lunch - we took the box truck and headed to the plumbing supply store to pick up the things he had ordered yesterday. Unfortunately, two of the drain pieces he needed weren't in and aren't supposed to be in til tomorrow. Kind of threw a wrench into his plans because he really wanted to get the plumbing lines in today. All of those thimbles that Jim planned ahead for on our outside wall now have to be completed - which means electrical, water and sewer - before we can backfill.
But Jim is always able to switch gears when needed. He got the steel plates all painted (love the orange!) for on top of the beam pockets.
We had to clear out the whole front of the site in order to make room for Jim to work as well as make sure that the crane operator has plenty of room when he comes on Friday. Unfortunately, Nudura was supposed to come this week and pick up the alignment system and bring us another roll of membrane - now they can't come until next week. Jim had the alignment system all organized for them but now it's in the way, so all of that had to be moved.
Thank goodness for the Bobcat with the fork attachment!
I spent the afternoon taking apart the last of the plywood bulkhead pieces and then moving on to yet more cleaning cement from the steel shoring - there was another big pile under our worktable in front of the building.
Jim decided to start trenching the line for the sewer pipe - it has to be 4' down and be at a certain slope all the way to where the septic tank will be. Not all of that needs to be done now, but Jim wants to get enough done so that he can backfill around the site. At the back of this picture, you can kind of see clouds thickening up. It was the type of day that had you taking off your sweatshirt because it was warm and then putting it back on because it felt chilly with the wind.
He brought the excavator up and started digging. It's always scaring digging close to the structure - at least there was a little ditch in between.
As always with trenches, Jim has to get down into them and do hand shoveling. We had just gotten the laser level out and were going to shoot some elevations when it started spitting rain - and then started raining harder. We had to quickly scramble to get all of our tools gathered up, radios unplugged, windows rolled up and everything loaded into the back of the truck.
It only rained for maybe 15 or 20 minutes and much of it was very light rain. Of course, when you are in the process of digging in the dirt, that's 20 minutes too much. The ground was already soft from having some rain the last two evenings and the machines driving over it tend to make a giant mess.
But before long, the sun poked its head out while the rain turned to just mist - and then we saw the most glorious rainbow. The colors were just so bright and incredible!
Then within minutes, all of the clouds that you see in the picture above moved away and we were left with a cloudless, amazingly bright blue sky. It was quite a show!
So even though it was pretty late in the day, it was back to work! Jim moved a little bit of dirt from the piles he had dug and put them in the driveway, smoothing out some of the muddy tracks and making it easier to drive over. He got a good bit of the trenching done by the time I packed up to come home.
No comments:
Post a Comment