YadaBlog

For two hours last night I wrote down every step and problem I have encountered since starting the construction of this deck. I was typing for two hours! I saved the post, published it, and, when I went to view it, the post had vanished. All my hard work gone. Today I tried to find it, but it is lost. Oh well. Time to start anew with an account of events in reverse order.

Today (Sunday) - Installed three short 6x posts that will support the upper deck. This was rather easy. I stood the post in the anchor, attached a post level to it then used stakes, braces and clamps to hold the post steady while I plumbed the post. Once they were level all around, which they pretty much already were because of all the time I put into leveling the footers, I drove nails through the anchor and into the base of the post to fasten the post to the footer. The only problem that I encountered was that the force of the pounding seemed to move one of the anchors. To try and stop this movement I retightened each bolt on the anchors, and, when pounding the nails, I used the maul on the other side of the post to check any movement.

Once these smaller posts were set, I measured and cut the four long post to support the pergola. Using pretty much the same technique, I installed one of the pergola support posts by myself. It was rather heavy so the only thing I did differently was to attach the brace to the post before lifting it into position so it could be used as a deadman to support the weight of the post. Once the post was upright, I supported it with the braces and stakes to level it, then drove the nails.

I realized that I have less than a week before I need to be at school. I doubt I will be finished before then, so it looks like I will be spending some weekends finishing the deck.

Tomorrow, will be putting up the opposite corner post for the pergola. Once that is up I will construct and install the girder then the other small upper deck posts.

8.11.07 Saturday

Today I am officially finished with the footers. I dug the last hole (the one to solve the mistake) by hand (a two hour task), installed and leveled the concrete form tube after a lot of chipping away at the side of the hole, and finally was able to fill it with concrete.

8.8.07 Wednesday - 8.10.07 Friday

Took a few days off. I had just finished the footers and my wrists were killing me. Completeing the footers took much more time than I had anticipated so, Wednesday I read and got ready for hosting the prayer group. On Thursday, I spent the day online and on Friday, Meagan and I went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix. Back to work on Saturday.

This also gave me time to figure out how to solve the problem of the post in front of the kitchen window. I could either move this footer further away from the house, which would mean moving the other footer too or I could make the span between supports longer and move the footer next to the patio to the end of the lower deck. Doing this would mean another footer would need to be dug midway between the two end footers to support the longer beam. Moving the footers away from the house wouldn’t really solve the problem. The post would still be infront of the window. Moving the footer next to the patio wouldn’t work either because the middle support beam would be in the middle of the deck. What I decided to do was shorten the distance between the footers by digging a new one beween the window and the end of the house. The beam would then be cantilevered and the cantelever would be supported with a brace.

8.7.07 Tuesday — I poured the concrete for the last two footers today. Yahooo! But, first, I had to fix the cave-in of the footer next to the patio. The loose dirt had to be removed and the forms, which had to be cut to fit the oblong shaped hole next to the patio, needed to be replumbed. This took a lot of time and patience because I had a lower section of the form and an upper section. As I moved the upper section to level it, the lower one would move the opposite way and throw the form out of level. Eventually I got it level and gingerly back filled. As I did this though, the soil was seeping through the gaps where the cut was made. To stop the leak I inserted the cut-out piece of form perpendicular to the opening.

To prevent another cave-in, I mixed the concrete away from this footer and hauled it several feet in a wheelbarrow. As I did this, I realized it was a bit more efficient because I could dump the mud from the mixer into the wheel barrow without stoping the mixer. If I did this over a hole the torque of the mixer would cause a lot of the concrete to spill onto the soil. The spinning of the mixer as it was dumped loosened the concrete from the sides so there was also less scrapping of the mixer needed.

Another way I prevented a cave-ing was to add concrete as I added backfill so the pressure on the inside and outside of the form would roughly be equal. That meant I had to have a wheel barrow of soil and one of wet concrete on hand. This really took a lot of time but it is finished.

8.6.07 Monday — Today I poured concrete into four of the footers. Into each hole I put a concrete form tube that was cut to a 32″ length. In every case, the form was neither level nor centered. That meant I had to chip away at the side until I could center the form and level it.

How did I determine center? Well, that meant running a line from the ledger to a batterboard setup just past the hole. This line needed to be squared with the ledger using the Pythagorian theorem. Another line was set up parallel to this over the other holes. A third line ran perpendicular to the first two and over the hole at the precise distance away from the ledger that beam would run. The diagonals of this rectangle were measured and the line parallel to the house was adjusted until the diagonals were the same length. Where the lines crossed was the center of the footer. So, I put a ruler across the diameter of the form and dropped a plumbline right where the lines intersected. The plumbline only hit the center of the tube for one tube. For all the other tubes I had to chip more dirt from the side of the hole and find the center of the form again while keeping the tube level.

8.5.07 Sunday –  Took the day off.

8.4.07 Saturday — Poured five of the footers. Not one was exactly where it was supposed to be, so I needed to chip away at the side of the hole to get the tube centered and level. Pouring the concrete is grueling work. I would get the mixer set up over the hole I was filling then put four 80lb bags of concrete into the wheel barrow and haul them to the mixer. Then, I’d heave a bag up to the mixer and dump it it in. A gallon of water was poured in and the mixer was turned on. While the mixer was turning, I would fill up jug of water and take a drink myself. When the concrete was ready, I’d pour it right from the mixer into the hole. Then I’d scrape off whatever concrete had stuck to the side and blade of the mixer. I repeated this five or six times for each hole until it was filled. Once filled, the mud was scrapped off the top so it was level with the form tube much the way a cook would us a level teaspoon of an ingredient. The center was marked by finding three diagonals and the j-bolt was pushed into the mud at the center point.

During a break, I was admiring my work when I just happened to look up. It was then that I noticed that the corner post of the pergola would be directly infront of the kitchen window. This problem had to be solved.

8.3.07 Friday — Filled the first two hole with concrete.

 8.2.07 Thursday — Cut the form tubes to size and put the first two into hole. Centered and leveled them.

8.01.07 Wednesday — Sixty one bags of concrete were delivered, bringing the total to 81 bags. And each bag is 80lbs! House cleaning.

7.31.07 Tuesday — Picked up the concrete mixer from Jeff and 2o bags of concrete from Home Depot.

7.30.07 Monday — Called around getting prices for concrete while waiting for the footer inspection. I was deciding between having a truck bring the concrete, getting it already mixed and hauling it to the site myself, or getting bags and mixing by hand.

If I used the truck, then all the forms would have to be in and ready to fill. Posed a problem because the form tubes are cardboard and cannot get wet. So if it took several days to do all the form tubes and it rained, all the work would be ruined. Also, if I order a truck, I would need a small army of helpers with wheelbarrows moving mud from truck to tube because I could only have truck for thirty minutes. Ordering a truck would also involve a lot of waste because I would have to buy 2 yards and I only need about 1.5 yards of concrete. Half a yard would go to waste and I’m sure it would have to come off the truck and be dumped in the backyard somewhere.

Hauling ready mixed concrete by myself would also mean having every thing ready and needing a lot of help, but there would be less waste because I would buy what I needed. The time it would take to get it to the site was way too long and would mean I would only have 10 minutes to fill the holes before the concrete hardened.

Buying bags would mean a lot of work but I could work at my own pace and have the time to solve problems if they arose. I went with the bags.

The insopector came about 2 o’clock and the holes passed!

7.29.07 Sunday — Took the day off.

7.28.07 Saturday — Rented the post hole digger for the second time and dug the last seven holes with help from Dad and Jack. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Every hole except the last was a bear. I was on controls and Jack and Dad were stability. We’d go down about six inches and the auger would get bound up on rocks. We tried wiggling it free but the only way  to dislodge it was to heave it up and out of the hole. Then we’d get the loose soil and rocks out of the hole and drop the auger back in for a few more inches until we got to 30″ bellow the surface. Each hole to four to six drops of the auger. The last hole reached 30 inches in only two attempts.

7.27.07 Friday — No helpers so I took the day off. I needed it. The vibrations of the auger aggrevated my carpal tunnel syndrom and my wrists were alternating between aching, tingling, and burning all day. Picked up Meagan from band camp at 4:00pm.

7.26.07 Thursday — Finished laying out the last of the footer postitions. Dad and Russ came to help did the holes. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! I could not have done this by myself. Rented a post hole digger and started digging. It was a lot harder than I thought. We were only able to do five hole before Dad and Russ had to leave. Each hole was rough. We had to bore through very hard, dry, rock filled clay. Russ cut his arm on the flashing and we all wiped after just two hole. I was wondering if I had bitten off more than I could chew with builing this deck but we persevered and got five done.

I was able to save some money on the post hole digger since I only used it for four hours instead of 24.

After Dad and Russ left, I dug the hole for the footer next to the patio by hand. A two hour job but it was the only way as it was too close to the concrete patio for the post hole digger.

7.25.07 Wednesday — Got back early from our little vacation in Oxford, Maryland so I put up the ledger for the lower deck, solved some fastening problems with the upper deck, and began laying out the position of the footers. The ledger I figured would only take a couple of hours. Actually, it took about six. I had to line up six holes through the ledger into the cinder block foundation wall and into two 2×4 backer boards. I measured and marked the position of the holes several time before drilling, and the bolts which were too short (went to the store and got the right length) still did not line up. But, after about 20 trips into the smelly, buggy crawl space, I finally got the ledger up. 

The ledger to the upper deck needed to be fastened to the stringer of the house every 16″ on center. All the holes drilled into the stringer were good except for five. One was right against a floor joist, two were right into them and two neither went into a joist nor the stringer. Strange! I moved the holes for the two in the joist over a couple of inches and secured with bolts. Two did not bite with screws and I discoved there wasn’t a stringer at these points so I drilled into the nearest floor joist and fastened with a lag screw. The last hole I left alone since it was above a successfull fastening and code only requires the bolts to be fastened in a staggered pattern.

With both ledgers up, I could now lay out the position of the footers. The ledgers needed to be up before doing this because all the lines to determine the position of the holes had to be squared with the house i.e. the ledger. This meant I had to run lines from the ledger at the center point of the posts, square the lines up, run a perpendicual line at the point where the center of the post would be and square this perpendicular line by measuring the diagonals. This was very tedious work with a lot of measuring and adjusting. It also took much more time than I thought it would.

7.23.07 Monday — 7.24.07 Tuesday — Short trip to the Eastern Shore

7.22.07 Sunday — Day off

7.21.07 Saturday — Dad came and we put up the ledger to the upper deck and covered it with flashing. We cut the legdger to size, marked the position of the deck joists and the position of the holes for the carriage bolts.  The ledger was then used as a template for where to cut away the siding. With siding cut (the point of no return), the ledger was tacked into place and the holes were drilled into the ledger and through to the stringer. Once the holes were drilled the ledger was secured in all but 5 holes.