There was more rain and no work. This is unusual for May, at least in the old days.
There was no post yesterday because we were giving a UCI dinner party in Irvine and weren’t out here late enough to take end-of-day pictures, but we also didn’t have time to write anything.
Picture 1
Picture 2
In the previous days’ photos, the top of the garage was just metal. Today it has a layer of phenolic plywood on the surfaces that will get concrete poured on top. This is a 12-ply plywood made up of maple and phenolic film on the outside surfaces, to provide a smooth finish to the concrete. They have still not finished the back triangle corner because it turns out that the company supplying the scaffolding forgot to send the rails for those sections (along with forgetting the prop heads — remember those? — one wonders how this company makes money). Those pieces are supposed to come tomorrow. Then they too will get this phenolic plywood on them.
The guys had to spend a lot of time today wrenching the wood out of the keys (concrete slots that lock the upper level of concrete into the, now hard, lower level). It was time-consuming because the wood had swollen with the rain and had to be pried out of the concrete trenches with a prybar. The keys are where the structural steel will fit that provides the structure for the overhangs–in one case the apartment deck and the second case part of the apartment, itself. It is now clear that the Chinese Elm tree just to the south of the apartment will have to go. Picture 2 shows how close the front of the apartment is to the tree. It is also the tree that we have been growing our passion fruit vine on. Whether we’ll be able to transplant it remains to be seen.
Picture 3
Picture 3 shows the area behind the garage where other guys were using the backhoe and a jackhammer to clean up the space for the retaining wall that separates the deck (and the space underneath it where the storage bladder for rainwater will go) and one wall of the house. They started building the rebar rack for this wall and the floor for the water storage bladder under the deck. The space between this wall and the back garage wall, which you can see below, is for our 9000 gallon rainwater bladder.
The first thing the rebar guys did this morning was to build the header above where the garage door will go. You can see the wooden header with the supports that will hold the forms for the garage ceiling in the front of picture 1. Picture 2 shows the same header from above. Because this concrete header spans a 20′ opening, it contains an array of 6 of the largest sized rebar that will be used on our job, one inch in diameter.
Picture 1 – Garage door header from inside the garage
Picture 2 – View from above the garage showing the wooden form for the garage door header in the middle, the decking that, eventually, will support the wood forms for what will be the floor of the apartment and the ceiling of the garage on the left, and the decking that will support the form for the apartment deck on the right.
Picture 3 — A wider shot of the garage from above. You can see the black waterproofing where the stairs will eventually go up the side of the garage.
At the same time, the contractor was waterproofing the side of the garage that will be below ground level. The waterproofing was some kind of black, tarry, smelly stuff. The diagonal line you see in Picture 3 is the line where the outside staircase up to the apartment and the house deck will go. In Picture 4, you can see where he also waterproofed the foundation wall for the back of the house. This week they will put what they call a sausage behind this wall: a drainage pipe, surrounded by gravel, all wrapped in a mesh fabric that lets water, but not dirt in. Once that is in place, they can begin to move the many piles of dirt, whose presence is obstructing work on the house itself, to build up the slope behind the wall.
Picture 4 — Retaining wall that will also be the back wall of the house. This wall will let us create an acceptable shallow grade from the back of the house up to the backyard.
For those who like to see construction pictures — and be honest now, really who doesn’t? — here are a few more of the garage from Friday.
Picture 5 – Inside the main area of the garage (where the cars will go). You can see the supports and the metal decking that will hold the forms for the concrete that will make the ceiling of the garage and the floor of the apartment.
Picture 6 – The front of the garage from the outside looking into the garage door. The scaffolding here will support the concrete deck of the apartment.
There was no post yesterday because the prop heads didn’t arrive, and there was no work for the guys. Today they brought a Bobcat and started working on additional digging in the back behind the garage wall. Then about 9:30, the FedEx truck arrived with the 437 prop heads, and they got to work putting up the posts and the racks. The two photos show the garage from inside and from up above. The racking company, who sent the wrong parts, also laid out with a computer where to put each post and rack. In the second picture, you can see that the racks are color coded. They have not yet done the tricky part in the back triangle part of the garage. Perhaps tomorrow.
Back foundation wall of the house
Trench for the wall to be built between the house and the deck
Another disappointing day. The structure company FedExed the props we needed to some other customer and sent us their order. Not building great confidence in the company. So the rebar guys finally took the plywood off the back foundation wall and cleaned out the trench that will be the foundation of the retaining wall between the house and the deck instead of building the ceiling of the garage.
Today was disappointing. Somebody forgot to order a forklift and so the materials to be used to create the structure for the garage ceiling had to be ferried by small truck from the street to the garage and it took two hours. Then it turned out that the truck had only brought 10 props, which are a little gizmo that sits on top of the posts that support the ceiling. So they could only put up 10 posts. They also put up wooden headers and then organized all the materials.
You can see 8 of the posts here where they have covered the rectangular part of the back of the garage. The remaining triangle will be done with one rectangle through its middle, and then 2 small triangles. More props will be delivered tomorrow. At the top of the posts is a plastic rack on which the plywood will be laid followed by some spacers on top of that and then the concrete.
Friday was a day of taking down the plywood, spacers, and clamps, used to make the forms for the garage walls, and putting everything away carefully in piles so they can be reused on the next layer of walls. They are only allowed to pour 8 feet high of concrete at a time, so each floor is poured separately. The garage will have 2 floors because it has an apartment on top. The second photo is a top-down view into the back of the garage behind the interior wall. The cars will be parked in front of the wall with car chargers, and we will use the back area for storage and perhaps a workshop. The third picture gives a view from in front of where the garage door will be into the garage.
On Monday, a supplier will deliver the scaffolding that will support the forms and the concrete that will form the ceiling of the garage (and the floor of the apartment), and perhaps they will start putting it up.
Another thing that they are planning to do this week is put in the rebar for the foundation of a retaining wall that will be under the south wall of the house and the north side of the deck that runs between the house and the garage. This retaining wall is necessary because we are putting a 10,000 gallon water bladder under the deck. This will be used to store rainwater and to provide water for the fire department in case of a fire.
Also this week, they still need to remove the plywood forms from the retaining wall at the back wall of the house.
Well, the first cement truck didn’t arrive until 12:40, so there was a lot of waiting around this morning. It turns out because we are not starting any noisy activities until after 8:00 AM, in deference to the neighbors, that when we order the cement truck for 9 AM, we really only get trucks that have finished with the jobs that ordered it for 7 AM. But at the end of the day, they got all the walls poured.
The first picture shows a long view of pouring the cement into the wall cavity for part of the garage. The second shows a closeup. And the third shows another person who goes around after a layer of cement has been poured in and uses a vibrating rod to cause the cement to go down and fill all of the holes and get rid of any bubbles. Not only does the device vibrate, but as it touches any rebar, the vibration of the rebar helps force bubbles out. If you want to read about vibration, this article explains it. https://www.thebalancesmb.com/how-to-vibrate-concrete-844451
Today the inspector came and approved the forms that have been built. So tomorrow the cement truck will come again.
This is a photo of the end of the back house wall. It was not finished when the inspector came, and I asked the contractor how he could approve it before all the plywood was up, and the contractor replied that the inspector only cares about the steel, not about the plywood.