Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Timelapse 12/14-12/24

Mostly rebar work this time around.


Some pics from a different vantage point

I haven't shown pictures from the uphill side or the driveway for a while.
Take a look at the new shots from yesterday. I'm the guy there in the red shirt.

View from uphill SW corner

Same corner a little closer up

Driveway entrance

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Almost ready for main lower slab pour

Pictures from this past weekends trip. The main slab that supports the large retaining wall is almost ready to be poured.





Monday, December 16, 2013

Weekend visit pictures

They've started laying the rebar reinforcements for the grade beams. Still shocks me how much steel goes into these things.



rebar cage in gradebeam trench

More timelapse fun!

I've been playing with the settings on the speed of the timelapse. Here we are still at 1 pic every half hour. But the framerates I'm uploading have been squished somewhat. The latest one I'm showing 5frames/sec. The prior one I'm showing 1 frame/sec. Since Youtube has controls to speed up and slow down I think this may strike a happy medium. Let me know what you think.

This is at 5fps:


1fps:

Sunday, December 8, 2013

More forming boards..

Alot of the wood is up for the forms. The walls will be tall!


all those nice 2x12's!

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

3rd material shows up!

Concrete, steel .. now WOOD. Unbelievable amounts of wood are used for setting up forms for concrete. I'm hoping some of it can be recycled for something else on the build. Its starting to look like a structure finally!



Monday, December 2, 2013

Trenching for grade beams

After thanksgiving I went up to take a look at the progress..
Concrete has been poured for all the piers. They are now trenching and prepping for the forms for the interconnecting gradebeams. It will be quite a structure when completed. I was suprised at how much wood they will be using for the forms. I have to think of ways to re-use those forms for something.



Monday, November 25, 2013

Pumping day!

After a bit of a rain delay from last week, we have finally starting pumping concrete!
A pretty big milestone as this represents the first 'structure' at the site.

Concrete being delivered into pump


Concrete being pumped up to the uphill caissons.

Monday, November 11, 2013

Timelapse video take 2

Native resident..

One frame of my timelapse camera showed this curious onlooker. Looks like a young buck.

Young buck inspecting the site...

Drilling progress..

Drilling was mostly complete by this past weekend..

Holes dug. 18 feet is awfully deep in person.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Drilling has started!

Drilling for the piers started today. Should take a couple days to get them all in. Next up is rebar, inspection, then pouring.

Top right most pier location

Drill rig on the top most level

Monday, October 28, 2013

Shoveling gravel!

We had a 5 yard gravel delivery come when no one was around. Of course it was dumped in the wrong place. The family and I spent the day moving the gravel to the right spot. Nothing like a good day of hard labor shoveling rocks to keep the family together!

Gravel up on the building pad.


Gravel now spread on the driveway with my little helper on top

Whats left of the gravel on the pad

How the driveway looked when complete


Friday, October 25, 2013

On site with another SIP build.. (not my house)

Yesterday I went and visited a site that was using SIP's for their walls because I was curious as to how these panels go together. Below is a photo sequence showing them putting up 2 panels.  With this method an entire house's exterior walls can go up in a day or two.  Just to be clear this is not my house.  We're probably 2 months from being to this point with my project.

one person carrying a small panel

making sure the first panel is plum

Laying mastic and inserting panel on top of 2x6 on subfloor

Ensuring panel is sitting correctly

squaring panel before nailing

Screwing the panel in place

Applying mastic & standing up next panel

clicking the next one into place etc...
Just seeing this one go up so fast gives me confidence that I made the right choice going with SIP's. A couple of people can raise all the perimeter walls in a day or so.



Saturday, October 19, 2013

Timelapse Construction

We put a time lapse camera on a tree to test the location. It was set to 1 picture per hour. The total video represents a week of captures. I think its about the right rate for a multi month video. As you can see there wasn't much activity at the site the past week.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Boulders!

They looked much bigger at the landscape supply store.. 7887lbs worth.


Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Final Grading

Some pictures of our final grading work.

Driveway with a truck on it!

Laying out for foundation work

Grading with backyard cuts

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Soil conditions

One interesting aspect of how engineers decide on how deep piers must be dug is based on soil conditions. These recommendations are usually based on small soils samplings taken by a soils engineer.

Once those tests are done the structural engineering is based on those results. Now in our case we have specced some pretty deep peers partly because we are ignoring the top 4 feet of soil as being expansive clay. Once the site is excavated you can clearly see the composition of the layers and how deep they are. Based on what we actually see now we're going to try and see if we can ammend those recommendations because the clay appears to be very shallow. So shallow that almost all the clay is gone from the initial excavation work. I'm hoping this can save us some time and money for the foundation work. We're having the soils engineer come out to take a look. Wish us luck!

The picture below shows a cross section of depth of the unmolested hill. the dark dirt is clay the light is sandstone. note how the small roots are above the sandstone layer.

driveway section

Friday, October 4, 2013

Day 3

Driveway taking shape


Almost all dug out already...