LittleHouse – Breaking Ground

 

LittleHouse – Breaking Ground

by admin on Oct.12, 2004, under Foundation

Breaking Ground
10/05/2004
Well, it’s getting pretty close to our six-month progress inspection. So we decided to take a break from building the wash house and make a start on the Little House.
Here, I am digging the pier holes with a one-man auger we rented from United Rental in Prescott. We picked up the auger on Thursday on the way up from Mesa, and returned it on Friday morning. That really cut into the time we had to work.

 
Digging Piers

Digging Pier Holes
10/05/2004
We figure that if we have the piers in by the inspection date in December, that we will have shown “significant progress” that the county is looking for.
We need to dig a total of 24 piers. We need 12 for the 14′ x 24′ cabin structure. In addition we decided to use 12 for the 8′ x 24′ attached porch.
We could have gotten by with only 6 for the porch, and supported it by the ledger, but we felt it would be better, and not cost too much more to include 6 more under the porch for added strength.

 
Pier Holes

Cleaning Holes
10/05/2004
After the auger was done with the holes, we cleaned the loose dirt out of them with whatever we had on hand. At first this was a soda cup. Later, we used a couple of electrical outlet boxes.
Most of the holes are 18″ deep, but on some we hit rock before that depth, and stopped there. We also ran into roots, which are being chopped out and dug out as we go.

 
Cleaning Holes

Getting it all out
10/05/2004
Tara worked hard at getting all of the loose dirt out of the holes.
The holes were dug with a 12″ auger bit, and widened at the bottom to 16″ with a small trenching shovel. This provides the proper 16″ x 6″ footing for each pier for our size of house.

 
More Cleaning Holes

Rebar Installed
10/05/2004
We mixed and filled each hole with 3″ of concrete. Then we placed a cross of rebar and a vertical rebar into the wet concrete.
We followed this with another 3″ of concrete to cover the crossed rebar.
The vertical rebar will tie the pier with the footing. They are lined up with the string we ran from end to end.

 
Rebar in Piers

We got the 12 footings for the house done on this trip. We will finish the 12 footings for the porch on our next trip in November. It’s hard to get too much done when you have to make a 150 mile round trip to Prescott for rental equipment.

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