Posted in Timelapse

Bedroom Shotcrete

Contents
  1. The Video
  2. Challenges
  3. Financial
  4. Try to get a quote that includes some expectation of how far they will get.
  5. A few more guys is a good thing.
  6. The lift will save you more than it costs.
  7. Chunks
  8. Equipment
  9. Big job
  10. Gallery

After a lot of setup work, we were finally ready to have the shotcrete sprayed over our bedroom wing.  The Quonset garage was actually done at the same time, but that is another post.

In this post, we have some pics to illustrate the process and challenges, along with some tips for anyone planning to do something similar.

But first, The video.

The Video


Challenges

Financial

Try to get a quote that includes some expectation of how far they will get.

With each shotcrete visit, the cost (when I divide out per yard) has gone up dramatically.  I don’t have the calculation right in front of me, but this visit was more than double the cost per yard of the basement job, and that first one totally blew the original estimate out of the water.  So, as you can imagine, we have now (writing after the 3rd shotcrete session) blown thru all the money we allocated for shotcrete in the budget.  It is not so much that the shotcrete company underestimated the daily costs, but they dramatically overstated the amount they could get done in a day.  During this run, there was one day when they only got 8 yards (because the compressor broke), other days got 16 or 24. They said they would pro-rate, but in the end, the costs were all the same per day.  If you are paying a daily rate and the volume can vary from 8 to 24 yards, it is difficult to budget.

We will need to come to a better agreement that factors in some of my expectations when we do the next shotcrete.  We want to be fair (it is hard specialized work), but we don’t want to go bankrupt either. Next time, I am going to try and work in some better expectations of how far they should get for the money.  It probably seems basic, but I am sure it is easier said than done.

A few more guys is a good thing.

Each day costs thousands of dollars for the base crew and concrete… The extra finishing guys are just a few hundred dollars each.  That is a bargain when you realize how much energy they save the base crew (so those guys get more concrete up) and how much smoother they make the walls (so you can save on waterproofing).

The lift will save you more than it costs.

The lift rental was over a thousand dollars.  This got worse because the shotcrete took a weekend and several days more than expected.  But actually, they guys at Wolverine Rental were pretty cool about it and made me a good deal that factored in days when I wasn’t actually using the rental, even though it was sitting on my lot.

The crew would have liked a nicer lift with a more powerful engine and tracks, I can’t even comment on how much more that would have cost because I simply couldn’t find one at any of the rental places in my area.  I suppose it would have saved a little time (they got stuck a few times), but probably not enough to justify the additional cost (I am guessing it would be a lot more).

The crew also complained about not having a second lift for the finishing crew.  Looking back, this may have paid for its self…  I’ll have to do a more careful financial analysis when I get a chance, but probably.  Looking forward toward my remaining shotcrete jobs, I don’t think there will be enough lift work to justify two, but maybe…

After saying all the negative stuff first for some reason… I will also say that I am pretty sure the lift really saved us more than it cost.  Certainly, it was necessary for reaching the awkward hard-to-reach places with that shotcrete hose.  But it also helped in the other areas where they could have used scaffolding or some “cheaper” method.  It helped move the hose around and allowed the guys to conserve their energy so they could get further in a day and do a better job.  I can do a quick mental calculation and say that it easily saved me much more than it cost.

Update: Funny side update, but 6 months later the Shotcrete contractor texted me to say that the lift (which his crew operated) damaged his 900$ hose while it was pulling it around.  Later in the text conversation, he said he would be nice and not bill me for the damage.   ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Chunks

One of the mix trucks must have had some old cement set inside it after a previous delivery.  When it brought us our concrete, those chunks broke off and jammed up the concrete pump causing us to lose nearly an hour while the shotcrete guys tried to get the chunks out again.  Because we delayed the cement truck past the time they expected it to stay on site, the concrete company charged us an extra fee (75$), which was nothing compared to the value of the delay to us…  Any longer and we would have had to dump the remaining concrete. At the time, Sherri took this picture of the chunks so we could argue against the silly charge, but in the end, the 75$ wasn’t enough to bother fighting.

The chunks of concrete that came out of the mix truck and jammed the concrete pump. Sherri’s shoes for scale.

 

Equipment

The concrete comes from the supplier in a mix truck.  The factory adds the dry ingredients into the truck according to the recipe from the shotcrete guys.  It is basically a 7 sack mix with sand and peastone and Fly Ash (carbon nanospheres that help it flow) and various other admixtures determined by the weather and other conditions.  Along the way, water is added and the barrel of the truck turns to mix it up while on the way (which is why it is called “transit mix”).  They need to get the concrete out of the mix truck and on the wall within 90 minutes of starting to mix it.

Once on site, the concrete truck dumps the wet concrete into the hopper of the concrete pump.  This pump uses a 110 HP Cummins diesel engine to power two large 6-inch diameter pistons that can handle pumping concrete with aggregates at a rate of up to 50 cubic yards per hour.  Of course, they never got above 8 yards per hour, but that is more a function of the complexity of my design.

Meanwhile, the compressor sends high-pressure air thru the smaller hose (1-inch diameter) to the nozzle where it meets the pumped concrete and blasts it thru the nozzle and out into the air…

All of this comes together in the nozzle.  The most obvious control is a mixing valve for adjusting the ratio of air to concrete right behind the nozzle.  The concrete pump is controlled by a remote that was usually carried by another guy (who could go over and check the pump when something goes wrong).  The nozzle man indirectly controls the flow rate of the concrete pump by communicating with hand signals (and occasional verbal abuse) to the guy with the remote.  The nozzle is also pretty heavy and the video clips show how the nozzle man has to work with his whole body to control it, often while standing in very precarious positions.  The end of the nozzle is a rubber tip that can be switched out depending on the task or concrete properties.  The nozzleman can control the fan of the shotcrete spray by pinching this tip with his fingers.

From there, it is all muscle and skill as the nozzleman builds up the concrete in the right places, properly encasing the rebar and all the other annoying things I have in my walls.

These are the main pieces of equipment that make shotcrete possible.

 

Big job

Shotcrete requires a lot of setup to get rolling.  Once the guys get rolling, they can only put up so much concrete in any one place before it starts to schlep off.   Instead of doing the bedrooms and Quonset separately as two smaller jobs, we combined them.  I am pretty sure this saved us money and gave the shotcrete guys somewhere to go when the one-half of the project needed some time to cure.

Gallery

I guess I’ll tell the other stories here in the gallery.

Bonnie helped me get a lot of final prep work done, like sweeping off the footings and adding extra ties (not sure how overboard we went).
First shotcrete
Nothing is getting thru the screen
First wall
First troweling
second wall
Troweling the walls
Starting on the next section while the guys trowel the first
Three guys each doing their part
At one point on the first morning, it started it rain. Bonnie and I put up plastic to keep it from causing problems on the inside shotcrete. Actually, at this point, Bonnie is doing all the work and I was just taking a picture
These are the main pieces of equipment that make shocrete possible.
Part way thru…
Getting started
Shooting an internal wall while I setup the camera.
If the house didn’t need to be buried, this “transparent” roof would be really cool.
Scaffold jacks are faster to place than scaffolding. They just cut a hole in the shotcrete to make a ledge for one side. Later, they patch up that hole.
Scaffold jacks are faster to place than scaffolding. They just cut a hole in the shotcrete to make a ledge for one side. Later, they patch up that hole.
Early on the first day
This east end gave the most trouble for the shotcrete, but they got it eventually
For some reason the color of this pic really pops…
Occasionally, to get the right angle, they had to get out of the basket. But they minimized this for several reasons.
The lift was really essential for this job. In addition to making it possible to reach the high places, it also took a lot of load off the crew by helping to lug around the hose.
The chunks of concrete that came out of the mix truck and jammed the concrete pump. Sherri’s shoes for scale.
While they were there, I had them pump in a couple footings bits that I forgot to include earlier.
Shooting from the lift
This part of the wall was too high to reach from the ground and too awkward to reach from the roof, so it just didn’t get troweled. Here is where that second lift would have come in handy. Instead, it was a nightmare to waterproof… More on that next time.
At some point part way thru…
Smoothing out the inside surface after they guys are done shooting… It is easy now. Much harder after everything sets.
Smoothing out the inside surface after they guys are done shooting… It is easy now. Much harder after everything sets.
This is how most of the inside surface looked. The screen effectively blocked the shotcrete from blowing thru the lath.
This is how the inside surface looked when there was a gap in the screen.
David just sitting in the hall at the end of the day… Seemed someone picturesque in a war-zone kind of way.
I loved going up in the lift to get a good view (and pictures) of the project.
Low angle lift view
The boys, up in a lift, looking over the work.
IN the afternoons, after the crew would leave, Sherri and I would use the lift to do other jobs, like put up lath on the garage.
This is a couple days in.
Here you can see some of the insulation we stuffed in the valleys to keep the weight down. We then covered over this with additional concrete so water could easily flow off.
3rd day, working on both the garage while the bedrooms were curing.
Here you can see the rebar, vent stack, etc. near the top of the quonset hut.
This was two or three days in…
Guys on the roof of the Quonset on the last day.
Top of the quonset
At the end of the second to last day, the Quonset hut was rough and the skylight curbs were not quite finished.
Final view of the garage from the lift.
The master bedroom has windows facing south and east
The master bedroom ceiling had a somewhat “fabric” look to it when it was all over.
Inside the master bedroom, this back corner will become the master bath.
Sherri is very concerned about upsetting the neighbors, so she was out there trying to sweep off the mess after all the trucks left.
This is the final view from the lift.

 

Rebar and Shotcrete over the Quonset Hut

Contents
  1. The Video:
  2. Information:
  3. Gallery:

Part of my earth sheltered home design included burying a Quonset hut.  Actually, this was the easiest and cheapest part of our build and if we had done the whole house this way, we might have been done the first year.

This post is for phase 3 of building our earth sheltered Quonset hut.  In phase one, we put up the steel Quonset (with a little help from our friends).  Phase 2 was getting up the Fox Blocks ICF endwalls.  That part was interesting, but took more time (and several posts).  We chose ICFs for the endwalls because they made the transition from wall to parapet for retaining the earth very straight forward.  Wood end walls would probably have been cheaper and faster, but not nearly as durable..

I have seen Quonset huts buried directly (with just a pond liner for waterproofing), but I wanted to put in a layer of reinforced concrete first. Phase 3 is to cover the quonset in reinforced concrete before we can bury it in phase 4.  (actually, I guess there was a waterproofing step before we can bury it also).  In this way, it is really the reinforced concrete that supports the earth load.  The Quonset hub becomes fancy form-work and an interior finish.

Here is the video about phase 3.

The Video:

Information:

Hot:  The day we put the insulation and plastic on the roof was officially the hottest day on record for our area…  The reflective Quonset hut was making it feel twice as hot and the heated metal was melting the duct tape that we used to tape down the Styrofoam. I edited the water breaks out of the timelapse, but they were about every 15 minutes.  Fortunately, we got clouds and cooler weather for the second half.

Crew:  Just  a quick note that I appreciated all the help I got on this portion of the build, both amateur and professional.

Rating:  My Quonset is rated for 75 lbs per square ft.  I am sure the engineers were thinking snow load and not concrete, and there is probably a significant safety factor built into that.  Either way, I am sure I significantly exceeded the official rating by about 50 lbs/sqft. Fortunately, my shotcrete was also sitting on the footings, shotcrete above that was really sitting on the shotcrete below, etc. The stiffening shotcrete really formed an arch from footing to footing and is probably not loading the Quonset hut significantly. Maybe if all the concrete were wet (no internal stiffness) at the same time, we might have had a problem, but instead, the shotcrete was curing and carrying load as it was applied.  Spreading the shoot over the 3 days probably helped.

Crenelations:  The Quonset crenelations (groves) were about 7.5 inches deep.  Across the top sections, we decided to fill with polystyrene strips 4 inches thick, 10 inches wide and 24 ft long.  Some quick math, and I can tell you that we placed more than 7 cubic ft of Styrofoam in each groove, which means we reduced the load on the top of the roof by about 1000 lbs per groove.  There were 20 grooves, and I filled 16 with Styrofoam, so that is a 16000 lb reduction.   I left 4 of the crenelations without Styrofoam (and added extra rebar) so they would have stronger hoop beams across.  We filled the concrete to a depth at least 4 inches above the crenelations, so the concrete in the crenelations was nearly 12 inches thick.

Plastic: The plastic liner was primarily to keep concrete from directly contacting the Quonset, and secondarily to provide an extra waterproofing layer.  I wasn’t fanatical about it.  The plastic is tough, but not impervious to puncture.  I have heard of people using pond liners with a heavy felt underlayment, or even grinding down all the bolt ends that could puncture the plastic.  Pond liner and underlayment can easily cost more than 50 cents per square ft (and the Quonset surface is well over 2000 sqft).  Our 6 mil plastic sheet cost less than 1/10th of that, so when it got a few little holes and tears I didn’t worry about it too much.  I had thought that the plastic would make it more difficult to walk around on top of the Quonset (because it could slip), but actually, it improved the walking conditions quite a lot.  I sagged the plastic to allow it to properly fall into each crenelation when the rebar and concrete were added.

Openings: The Quonset hut is a nice strong shape to work with (mine was an “S-Type”, the “Q” type would have been even better, but less practical without the straight stem walls).  Loads are transferred around it like pressure on an egg.  As you know, any crack in an egg weakens the overall structure tremendously.  I planned to have 3 openings in my Quonset shell, two skylights and a side door (to the mudroom). The most stressful time for the Quonset would be when it was covered with 46 yards of wet concrete (186,300 lbs) and two tons of rebar.  You do not want to have holes in the Quonset at that time.  Instead, I just created bucks to keep the concrete out of these three areas.  Later, I can come back and cut the Quonset steel with a grinder to make the openings.

Rebar: Each crenelation got 4 pieces of #4 rebar.  One vertical piece was “inside” each crenelation, centered and about 4 inches from the inner surface.  The other verticals were at a layer about an inch past the outer surface of the Quonset hut, spaced 8 inches apart.  The horizontal rebar was mostly tied to the outside of the vertical rebar and spaced no more than 12 inches apart.  Some horizontal pieces were placed first, against the surface.  These first horizontal pieces made it easier to place the outer layer of vertical rebar without things falling inside the crenelations.  They were kept off the Quonset hut by placing a few 1.25 inch rebar chairs (according to code).  We wanted most of the horizontal rebar further out where it could help hold more shotcrete up.

The other important rebar code section to worry about is overlapping the pieces.  We had a 40 ft long Quonset hut with 20ft long pieces of rebar.  I just placed them end to end and then came back later and tied 4ft long segments along that seam.  That was more than enough to overlap both sides by 40 diameters (code).

Electrical and Plumbing: I didn’t include it in the video, but we also ran plumbing and electrical before adding the shotcrete.  These were then inspected.  Part part of this was running white vent tubes up the side of the Quonset so they would come up the skylight curbs.

Balance: The Quonset hut shape holds even pressure very well.  It will actually get stronger when I put the balanced earth load on top…  But while applying dynamic load (such as the shotcrete) it is important to apply it evenly to both sides so the Quonset hut isn’t pushed flat.  Our shotcrete was poured over 3 days.  The first day got most of the short vertical walls done (our Quonset hut is an “S type”).  This stabilized the base and got us ready for the second day where they added most of the shotcrete, including filling some crenulations all the way across.  In the video, you can see them working one side and then the other, back and forth.  This required moving the heavy hose, which is tiring.  They made their lives a little bit easier by toeing the hose with the lift whenever they could. Then the crew left for the weekend (not ideal) and came back on Monday to finalize the top, add the shotcrete for the skylight curbs and do a final coat for smoothing.  All this time was partially because they also shot the bedroom at the same time (upcoming post), but planning to shoot things in a balanced and paced way is a good idea even if you could shoot faster.

The Compressor:  The shotcrete is moved to the wall in two ways.  The mix truck dumps the concrete into a hopper where it gets pumped (by a very expensive concrete pump) thru the hose to the nozzle.  In the nozzle, the “nozzle man” injects compressed air to blast the concrete at the wall.  Part of the magic of shotcrete (the strength, lack of cold joints, etc.) comes from the way it impacts/compacts the wall particle-by-particle.  Unfortunately, the compressor broke down soon after starting on the Quonset hut and somewhat spoiled the day (but somehow didn’t reduce the cost).  Ironically, this same compressor had broken down when they did the basement shotcrete, which was the last time the crew had come out.  They already had a concrete truck on site with 8 yards of concrete in it, so we decided to pump it out.  I knew that this wasn’t quite ideal in terms of speed of application or strength, but it did work and I didn’t have to worry about cold joints, since it was the first bit to be applied.  The next day, they rented a nice new compressor for only 60$ / day and it ran flawlessly.

Hard work:  Pretty much everything about shooting shotcrete is hard work.  Moving the hose, aiming it all day, keeping everything flowing, finishing the surface, repairing any issues with the equipment, cleaning up, loading up, moving scaffolding, etc.  It is all hard work and I appreciate the effort of the crew. Certainly I would suggest anyone think twice before deciding to take on this part of the build themselves.

 

Gallery:

These are pictures taken from my cellphone or time-lapse screenshots…  Enjoy.

Here you can see that we didn’t need to add rebar chairs very often to keep the rebar off the quonset
I used smurf tube (ENT conduit) to run my electrical.
Aerial view of the Quonset, ready for shotcrete
The lift was fun. Figured we would get some rides out of it.
Aerial view of the Rebar, ready for shotcrete
Shotcrete is hard work.
Here is closeup. You can see the rebar chair keeping the horizontal bar off the quonset.
Here you can see how the shotcrete pushed the plastic (peek behind the door frame)
This is pumpcrete around the plumbing vent stack that came out of the bathroom in the quonset hut. This is the mudroom, so it will also be enclosed later. Otherwise, I would have covered this pipe in concrete to protect it.
Here is the rebar on the other side of the door. These hoops were full depth all the way across, so I put an extra piece of inner vertical rebar.
Pumpcrete near the door. Note, I didn’t cut the doorway out of the quonset until the shotcrete had set.
Here Michael is playing with wasted concrete as they clean up the pumpcrete on the wall
Note, I didn’t cut the doorway out of the quonset until the shotcrete had set.
For my design, Rebar is spaced 8 inches horizontally and 12 inches vertically.
Getting going on the Shotcrete
The lift was indispensable
Ideally, they would have two lifts so half the crew could shoot while the other half finished.
Working on the roof
This is the end of the 2nd day (the first real day) on the quonset.
Aerial view at the end of the day. Some bands of concrete were completed across the whole arch and set before they came back to fill in the rest.

Rebar and lath for the bedrooms

Contents
  1. The Video
  2. Details
  3. Statistics
  4. Rebar Chairs
  5. Welding
  6. Curving Rebar
  7. Gallery

Last year, we got started on the steel structure.  This year (2016), we got all the rebar and lath up in preparation for shotcrete.  First, the video…  Then some info, but mostly a larger picture gallery than usual.

The Video

Details

Statistics

This process took from 2016-05-05 to 2016-07-26, so nearly 12 weeks of the calendar.  Of course we also worked on other things during that time (such as the garage which will be a separate video). Specific to this bedroom wing, we worked (at least for a couple hours) on 26 different days.  The time-lapse camera (which I ran pretty faithfully) recorded 77,653 images.  At one every 5 seconds, that means it was running for 388k seconds, or 107 hours.  If we divided that into 8 hour days, it comes to about 13.5 days.  About half the time, I was there by myself, 1/4 of the time with Sherri, and the last quarter Sherri and I had other help (Hunter, John, Bonnie, Joe & Jessica (my parents), Dan, Ethan and the plumbers).

If I had turned all 77,653 images into video at 29.97 frames per second, it would have been a little over 43 minutes of video.  I edited that down to under 10 minutes (less than 1/4).  In some cases, I edited out scenes, in others (such as that last interior wall), I just ran the speed of the video up to x900.  You are welcome ;^)

Rebar Chairs

We added rebar chairs to stiffen up the assembly and prevent “bounce”.

It is important to leave some space between the rebar and the lath for the concrete to completely encase the rebar.  To achieve this, we made sure to tie the lath on loosely (leave room for a couple fingers).  this works pretty well for the roof because the weight of the concrete will push the lath down and away from the rebar, but no further than the wire ties.  However, in the walls, the concrete can “bounce” the lath and then fall off the wall.  After seeing my setup, the shotcrete guy asked me to stiffen up the walls by adding rebar chairs where the lath was bouncy…  I had these chairs left over from the quad deck floor and they worked perfectly.

Welding

Welding was great because it really stiffens up the assembly so you can climb it without fear… and it actually doesn’t take much longer than tying.  In many cases, I just tied enough to keep the bars in place and pull any wide intersections close enough to weld.  Then I would just weld the rest of the connections much faster than I could have tied them.

The downside to welding is that the heat can actually change the properties of the steel and make it more brittle if you try to bend against the weld…  However, in my case, the welds are really just there to keep the steel in place long enough to pour the concrete.  After that, it is really the concrete that keeps the steel together (and vice versa).  My welds are intentionally shallow, just enough to tack the pieces together without significantly weakening the rebar.

You may find some places have building codes against welding rebar, but if you read them more carefully, they are really talking about cleaning that surface crud off the steel.  You get that sort of thing with arc welding, but not with the MIG welder that I use.  But in any case, there are no such rules for residential construction where I am building.

Curving Rebar

When you curve rebar, it is always trickier to curve the first and last couple feet.  But the middle curves pretty easily.  So, I usually curve the full 20 ft long pieces and then cut the nice continuous curve into as many pieces as I can get.   If the piece has a 5 ft straight wall before the curve, then I just start curving the rebar 5 ft from the end.  I usually start by “over curving” the steel a little bit and then straighten it out to get the final radius that I want.

Gallery

Here is a gallery of pics.  Some are just as people started or moved the go pro time lapse camera. Others are just candid pics that went by too fast in the timelapse.  There are also occasional cell phone pics in there also.  Thanks to everyone who came out to help.

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Photo op after getting the windows in.
A view of the top of the apse after adding the rebar.
Hard to see because it is backlit, but humming birds and butterflies kept getting stuck inside the lath.
The top of one of the interior walls
After getting the first rooms studs in place.
How the bedroom wall studs were attached to the tube steel. The angle cut across the stud was so my drill could reach those screws.
This is the connection for the end of the hall. In this case, the studs were under the tube steel, so the connection was a little different.
A close up view so you can see the stud with the rebar passing thru it and the lath and fabric attached.
Michael reading in his room.
While out there, Dan did some heavier welding also. Here you can see he is pretty happy with the weld.
Here David is setting up the Camera after changing the battery.
Climbing up to get the camera…
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Some times we would turn on the camera and then move it. It would get these odd pics along the way.
Some times we would turn on the camera and then move it. It would get these odd pics along the way.
It took us a while to figure out the first skylight frame, so we were pretty proud of it when we were done.
Hunter checking out the camera… Did I mention that it is a wide angle lens… Not good to get this close ;^)
Putting on the last board and we decided to pose for the timelapse.
After adding the first set of OSB boards. The neighbors must have really been wondering.
After adding the screws from the inside of the skylight, hunter would drop out the bottom… But this time, I took away the ladder.
Here I am holding the boards up on the outside while hunter is inside putting in the screws. This was so I could strip the boards out after the concrete sets.
Michael up in one of the skylights.
Kids just doing their thing.
This shows two skylight towers. On the one, I aligned the fan box with the angle of the tower, and the other I leveled with the ground. Not sure which will look better.
This white tube will allow me to draw the hot air from the top of the skylight back into the house.
View from below so you can see how the rebar is connected to the rest of the structure.
Another view of the skylight curb
The box on the side is for the bathroom fan. It exhausts up thru the white pipe and out.
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David found this 11 inch spotted newt… The largest I have ever seen.
Hunter messing around with the camera. These pics are in the time lapse, but they go by fast.
Sherri all tangled up and not looking like it is fun anymore.
All tangled up.
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David getting into the time lapse shot.
Michael getting into the time lapse.
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Michael and I put up the last section of lath, but first I decided to tilt the camera up.
Putting up the last section of lath.
A view of the all after all the lath was in place.
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At this point, we just had one more skylight to rebar.
This is the plumbing for the master bath side. It looks more straight forward than the boys room because the toilet was closer to the exit.
Rough plumbing for the boys bathroom. The pressure tester is on this end for the inspection.
This is the ceiling box for one of the bedrooms. Later we brought the wire in thru the blue ENT tube and connected the ground to the green screw.
We added rebar chairs to stiffen up the assembly and prevent “bounce”.

 

 

Running Septic Lines

Contents
  1. The Video
  2. Some details
  3. The Stack:
  4. The Shortcut:
  5. The Electrical cables:
  6. Gallery

We needed to hook up the septic side lines to run from the bedrooms and garage to the main central line coming from under the basement.  The original plan had these running under the house, but the plumber suggested that it would be much easier to run the line outside the house completely…  At some later point, we also decided to run the bedroom electrical along this outside line.  Of course, this all required some digging.  Gota love that nice soft sand.

The Video

Some details

The Stack:

The bedroom septic line had a further run and needed to be below frost depth, so it connected at a lower point on the stack.  Then I connected the garage line at a higher point.  However, I thought it would be a good idea to slope it more and get deeper than I had to…  Some plumbers say that you shouldn’t slope too much because the solids and liquids will separate and you will have clogging problems.  I have done my research and determined that was not true (just a plumbers wives’ tale) so I didn’t mind sloping it more.  However, after making the stack connection with the Y-pipe shown in the video, I decided that I didn’t like the angle of the connection.  Basically, these pipes are designed to connect at closer to perpendicular or maybe 5 degrees off.  My original connection was maybe 20 degrees off.  It was probably sealed, but it didn’t look great and I didn’t want to take any chances.  I ended up cutting off that Y-connection and extending the stack so i could connect at a higher point with less slope.

The Shortcut:

The plumbing and the electrical in the bedroom wing both connect in the laundry room, very close to eachother so they can exit from the same hole and follow the same trench…  However, I didn’t measure conservatively enough and although the electrical cables could reach the panel, I was worried about being a few inches short of making final connections, so we ended up digging a short cut trench for the electrical cables. At least we could still re-use about 2/3rds of the trench.

The Electrical cables:

Earlier, I had experimented with other kinds of cable, running thru conduit. This time I was using cable that was certified to be directly buried.  It was still in conduit where it came out of the garage (because it is not certified to be encased in concrete and because I didn’t want a potential leak above the floor anyway), but then came out of the conduit below the footings level.  I basically wired it according to above ground code with the required depth below the footing and bushings, etc. After burial, it will only further exceed code.

Gallery

Just some pics…

The Trench was a combination of had dug and Skid Steer dragged
The Skid Steer can’t dig like an excavator, but it can pull the dirt out of the way with the wide bucket…
The skid steer can’t dig like an excavator, but it sure can move dirt.
Another angle on the SkidSteer, because of reasons.
This is the stubbed in end of the garage septic line that had been buried before the garage floor or footings were poured.
This is the stubbed in end of the garage septic line that had been buried before the garage floor or footings were poured.
The main line is 10 ft below ground. These two side branches bring in the bedroom and garage lines.
The plumbing stack from above.
Pipe laid
This is the high end on the bedrooms side. The vertical part was for an additional cleanout. I left it off the video because the plumber didn’t like the angle of the fitting and cut this out before connecting up the way he wanted it.
My father dug most of the shortcut trench himself
Cables laid in the trench…
The boys were mainly for moral support, but still wanted to be in the picture. This picture was just in-case I needed to prove the depth to the inspector.
Another pic for the inspector, with Sherri being goofy in the background while working on the rebar.
This is quite a bit deeper than code requires.
This is the toilet rough in. We simply cut off the pipe and pushed in that fitting so we could attach the toilet.

Front Steel Columns

Contents
  1. The video
  2. Surplus Steel
  3. Trouble with the Forks

In this segment, we mark and place the front columns and the curved I-beams that form the framework for the entry and green house sections.  Most of the time-lapse footage was lost some how, but I did have some pics…

The video

Surplus Steel

I bought the columns from the surplus steel place in my area.  The cost was low enough that I didn’t mind a few imperfections.  No regrets and I will probably do it again.  I did put tape over the holes to keep wasps from moving in.

Trouble with the Forks

When I bought the skid steer, the guy who sold it to me said he also had a beat up set of old forks that I could have for 200$.  New forks cost 3 or 4 times as much, so I told him to send those with the skid steer even though I hadn’t actually seen them.  At first, I just noticed that the back board was a bit damaged.  After using them, I also noticed that the two forks were actually different thickness (miss-matched set) and had bent slightly differently and I was having trouble holding things level.

We didn’t worry about the back board, but my father and I fixed the “uneven” issue with some torches (and lots of patience) to heat up one of the forks so we could bend it to match the other.

But all that time, I was using the forks to lift heavy things, so I didn’t notice the 3rd issue…  When you apply loads the other way (pushing down on the forks), the locking mechanism is supposed to hold them in place.  However, the top ledge that holds the locking mechanism in place had been slightly stretched upward and increased the tolerance by maybe 1/4th of an inch, and that was enough for the mechanism to actually detach when the load was pushed the other way.

While setting the second I-beam, The beam got hooked on the bent back shield and wouldn’t let me lower the forks.  Since this flipped the load direction, it also shifted the locking mechanism down 1/4th inch relative to the forks and they detached from that top edge.

With the load direction reversed, the forks detached from the skidsteer

Those Forks are a few hundred pounds of heavy steel, so rather than just let them fall off and possibly damage something on the way down, we strapped them to the quick attach mechanism on the skid steer so we could still lower them carefully.

The final fix was to weld 2 pieces of angle iron across the top of the quick attach mechanism to remove the gap so it won’t be unlocked by a reverse load.

Final view. There will be windows under most of those Ibeams and a Front door under the left most one. Earth covered in grass, etc. will be above.