I arrived at the property about 7:30 AM to see a big pile of I-beams in the front yard. A very long transport truck had just dropped off a machine, which is not a crane, but can function as one for what was needed here. It could lift the rebar cages and also the rebar cages with attached I-beams. But in the early morning, the problem was trying to get the transport truck (85 feet long) back out of the canyon. I spent about 15 minutes trying to find the person whose car was parked at one end of a nearby parking lot preventing the truck from going around a loop and also trying to call the manager of the Wildlife Sanctuary 2 doors down to open their big parking lot. All to no avail. When I say “call,” I mean yelling because the manager has no cellphone. However, when I returned around 9:30, the driver had gotten out somehow.
They were able to drop the long rebar cages into the very deep holes fairly easily. At 9:30, they were doing the 4th. The rebar cages for the gabion postholes were the wrong size at the top for the I-beams, and had to be modified. That took quite a while.
As you can see in the last photo, they have 5 of the 8 gabion wall holes filled with rebar cages and I-beams. The goal now is to get all of these caissons completed so that the county inspector can approve them and the rest of the foundation rebar. As soon as we have that approval they will pour the concrete for all of the footings. Once that is complete, the contractor assures us that work will go more quickly.