Date: April 28 to May 10, 2025
Footings dug and inspected but nary a word from the construction company I'd been after for more than a year. I was having to face up to the idea that they weren't going to be able to take on this job. Since every big rain storm washed some rocks and silt into the footing, I was under some pressure to get a move on. Seems like a good time to leave the state, eh? Putting my worries aside, I flew off to Seattle to stay with daughter Sarah, visit my big brother and check out the old haunts and friends. And we had super nice weather:
The holy volcanic trinity. Hood also visible there to the left of Adams but not much captured by the phone.
It was just as well since after I got back from Seattle I realized things could use a bit more organization. I spent that week surveying where the wall would go on the footing (footing 24" wide and not all that straight as you've seen in the pictures, ICF wall 13.25" with 8" concrete core and will be very straight). I needed to know where the wall was because when we poured we'd insert 2' rebar dowels in the concrete sticking up to tie the wall to the footer. In that fascinating video in the last post I'm preparing a rebar dowel with the crook on the end. These were going in every 24" and the optimum placement is a bit off center toward the inside of the building. Structural engineers (like the one providing specs for the root cellars) get very persnickety about where these are placed since for maximum effect the rebar should be on the tension side of concrete as opposed to the compression side (compression caused by backfill dirt being piled up against the building.
Other critters had plans for the footings that week too:
I was used to frogs laying spherical eggs in our spring which form a blob. As I learned here, toads lay eggs in a rope shape which has a surprising coherence.
The next day I dug an alcove next to the creek and scooped the eggs out with a yogurt container and relocated them. I'm not sure if any hatched after the move but I hope so.
In the vendor department, on the 24th I finally made some progress on the ICF (Integrated Concrete Forms), the lego-block like styrofoam forms which we used for our house construction. Since then SCM had stopped carrying them although their web site still listed "Fox Blocks" brand ICF. So I had been reaching out to the regional NC sales rep for Fox Blocks. Unfortunately he is located in the central part of the state so it was a stretch to support me and he wasn't responsive. I searched the web a bit more and found a Fox Blocks dealer in Eastern Tennessee. That might sound far away but Tennessee was calved out of the original North Carolina colonial definition when the British Crown limited westward expansion over the Appalachians to honor it's treaties with indigenous peoples. So Eastern Tennessee encompasses the western slopes of the Appalachians, while Western NC encompasses the eastern slops. And that explanation is, as one of my co-workers once said, "clear as mud". In short, the vendor "Forever Walls" is about 45 miles from me as the bird flies, 70 miles / 90 minutes as the road goes. Not an easy commute, but Gerry was willing, I shared my plans and we scheduled a look-see for the second week in May.
During our phone conversation Gerry mentioned that the dowels should be every 16" (instead of the 24" I was planning for the main footer). He said their usual practice was to place the dowels by drilling the footing with a masonry bit after the fact. Of course I'd already prepared the correct number of dowels for my spacing, but realized if I used the dowels planned the root cellar I could switch to 16" for the rest of the foundation and let Gerry drill for the root cellar dowels.
The quartet of bike rider friends impersonating concrete workers showed up around nine thirty on the 28th. We went over the plan for the pour, what the sequence was, the level markers, etc etc. - my list of bullet points to cover ran to a page and a half! Then we sat down to wait for the 11 AM concrete delivery. You can hear a truck coming a mile away, and it was crickets. About noon I called the Southern Concrete dispatch line and he said they didn't have a truck available yet. So we decided to go ahead and have lunch since its 35 minutes to get here after the truck is loaded. Around one thirty we heard a truck grinding its way up Grapevine. I started to walk down the driveway to meet it and realized he had driven past our driveway and was now proceeding up over the hill, with no change of tone indicating that the driver had realized the error and was turning around at the switchback. I ran back to the house, got my truck keys, ran back down to the truck and set off in hot pursuit. I got all the way over the hill and was heading down into the Big Laurel valley before I found him coming back. I told him I'd pilot him to our job site.
It was a slow pull up back up to Grapevine Gap - he had 8 yards on board. But much to my surprise he went down the other side at a pretty quick pace. I turned ahead of him onto our driveway and waited as he lumbered up to the first corner, then the second. He stopped at that corner then started backing down the driveway! After 100 yards or so he starts to come up again, takes the corner too tight and whoopsie!
So there were a number of factors that caused the predicament. Once they load concrete at the plant the driver is required to deliver it within 80 minutes. And after the jaunt over to Big Laurel the clock for this load was past 70 minutes. I think he went pass our driveway because Google Maps went from showing our driveway in the wrong place, to not showing it at all and ad-libbing a trail to our house from the nearest point on Grapevine, which is above it. Trust me, there is no trail there - the slopes are 35% or steeper. In this case Apple Maps had it right, and a few weeks afterwards Google Maps finally got it right too. Then there was the overcooked brakes, caused by being in a hurry coming down Grapevine. When he got to the corner the first time, he was going to back up a bit to reposition but his brakes wouldn't grab so he ended up doing that big 100yd backup. And then charging at the corner when more finesse was called for.
Anyway it was clear he wasn't going to be able to drive out of that hole. I asked the driver if he wanted to dump the cement load right there and have me get the tractor to try to spread it down the driveway but he said no.
A large wrecker arrived after an hour or so and set up a cable around the top of barrel to see if the truck would sorta roll back and up the bank at the same time. What ended up happening was the truck settled more firmly down the bank. The prospect of it rolling over was very real. Putting that cable over the top that way necessitated stopping the barrel rotation, which implied that there was going to be 8 yards of solid concrete setting up in that truck barrel. The wrecker guy said we needed to call in the big boys - the kind of rigs you see on those reality TV shows.
By 4:30 pm it was pretty clear there wasn't going to be any concrete poured today, and my stalwart friends were ready to go home. But of course that truck had the driveway blocked, so a different kind of rescue was requested from an available and willing spouse who drove up from Asheville. Here the vagabonds stood by the side of the road waiting for a lift:
Perfect damn weather, of course!
Then the cavalry showed up. First two different crews from Southern Concrete including the shop foreman, and then the big boy. First time I've seen a vehicle with two steering axles:
With a very competent driver:
So we had a concrete truck, a very large tow truck and an even larger crane bearing wrecker packed into that corner. And they huffed and they puffed (4 minutes in the video for an hour of elapsed time) ....
So it was about 7:15pm when all was done and dusted. That road had been roughed up a lot. I heard the truck barrel was a total loss with its hardened concrete so the total cost of the mistake was upwards of $30K.
Well that's one way to spend your 48th wedding anniversary!
Next day I used the Kubota to bring down some big rocks from the construction piles and spent a few hours creating a rock bridge over the end of the culvert which would be way better if it was 8 feet longer. Some big rocks on either side of the channel and an even bigger rock to span them serves as an extension. Then I created wall above that and filled it to make the road wider and hopefully prevent the next truck that takes it too tight from doing the same thing.
The guys rode their bikes over to pick up the stranded cars and admired my road work.
So I was back to looking at the 10 day weather forecast to schedule the next attempt, and coordinating with my patient friends for when they might be able to make it. Best day seemed to be Wednesday May 7th, even though Bud and John T had other commitments. I went back to the well and recruited another cyclist John D to help out.
Looking to do what I could to avoid a repeat performance, I got some pointers from the hapless driver who put the truck in the creek and the SCM rescue crew about putting a "Job Site Here" sign at the foot of the driveway, which I did.
This time we knew not to expect the concrete before the scheduled 11AM time, so folks got there around 11. We sat down for lunch and still had plenty of time to chat before the truck showed up at 1:30. A very experienced greybeard driver was able to navigate his way up to the place and get turned around in the front yard. I asked if the sign had helped and he said he didn't even see it! Hand lettering on a cardboard box on a stick doesn't hack it I guess. He suggested using orange cones to mark turns and the continuation route after a turn.
Here is the first concrete off the tail of the truck:
We had to reposition the truck to reach different areas.
You might be wondering how that heavy heavy truck got that far back when there is a footer ditch across the front. Its a trick I learned when they built our house which is to get a bunch of tree logs (preferably locust), beams and lumber and lay it into the footer to fill it in. Then the truck backs over that.
Here is the rest of the video footage Charla took of that section.
We had two trucks for a total of 15 yards. The second truck continued down the east side.
And of course once the back footers have all been filled and the truck pulls forward then we need to (frantically) pull all the logs out and get the rebar back up on chairs so that we can pour the front footer.
We had quite a bit more concrete than we needed. I wanted to use it to supplement the small concrete tracks on the steepest part of the driveway that we created from surplus during the house build. However I needed to dig six inches of gravel out of the driveway where the concrete would go so that it wouldn't just be sitting on the surface. So I told the concrete guy just to empty what was left in the truck in a big pile on top of the front footing (which didn't need to be level with the rest since it wasn't going to have a wall on it).
I grabbed the tractor and with Roger driving and me working the backhoe, we scratched out a channel of sorts. Then Roger started using the front end loader to move the pile of excess concrete onto the driveway area. It wasn't easy to scoop up so we ended up shoveling a lot of it into the front end loader.
Meanwhile of course the clock is running and the concrete was starting to set up. John D and Joe were working very hard using my self-leveling laser level to figure out what areas were high or low and move concrete between them. Then I stretched a string along where I thought the dowels should go. I was going by the "edge of the wall strings" which were 2-3 feet above the level of the concrete, using a level vertically and trying to offset in 8" from there. Frankly it was hard to tell for sure, but I did my best. In hindsight I realize that I could have been better prepared by having stakes at each end that were exactly aligned for dowels and just above the concrete level so the string placement would be a no-brainer. Joe took charge of getting the dowels inserted as the concrete got stiffer. As soon as I got freed up from the driveway distraction, I worked with him to finish dowels. We had to use a hammer to get some of them down into the cement from the first truck.
We were all getting pretty dang tired. John D had to take off. Roger, Joe and I kept doing what we could and don't forget about washing off your shovels, trowels and other tools before the concrete hardens on them!
After Roger and Joe had gone I went back to the driveway which was very rough. I dealt with the stiff concrete by using a bucket to put water on it then used a stiff broom to smooth out what I could. Doing that weakens the concrete but I didn't care too much about the top inch of a 6" driveway track.
After the concrete had set overnight, the next task was getting the forms out and get some drainage organized for that spring water coming out of the hillside. Many of the forms were now wedged between the rocks and fill I used to support them and the concrete footer.
So I headed down to the rental place to get a measly 40 lb jackhammer with a shovel blade to help get them out.
After another day or two of clean up I was ready to do a walk-through to share with my stalwart friends. This clip starts with the surplus concrete put on the driveway:
It turned out "good enough", and in my opinion really good for a bunch of novices.
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