Today I have dug as far as I can go. I'm hanging 10 behind me. And trenched right up between my tracks. At least I have the bedding material within convenient reach. The job site coordination here is just abysmal. I had to move rebar, garbage bins, lumber just to get a place to put the dirt. I could get more done if I had more room! There was freezing rain and ice on the roads this morning so I took my sweet time bringing the dump truck out. There was a wreck not far from my house. Here's the 3406 on a cold morning with no heat, not bad until you crack the throttle.
Nice trench! Sanitary or storm line? Are the mafia blocks for temporary shoring or part of the final construction? Curious as to how much you use the hyd. thumb as opposed to laying pipe. We have manual thumbs as opposed to hydro on both our hoes since we lay pipe and grade more than we need a thumb. When laying pipe a thumb gets in the way and slows down production so the crews will drop the thumb and put it on only when it's needed.
Left to right, 8" storm, 8" sanitary, and 4" oil/water line from the catch basins and the elevator sump pump. Not dug yet; 4" grease line from commercial kitchen above. It is brought out from under the pour, but is shallow on the left. The blocks are set to grade in this case, as there is a massive footing pour just under the pipe. I bedded it with pea gravel and the blocks are abandoned. Grease goes to the 2000 gallon interceptor we crane set in December. It is approximately under the truck's rear axles, buried in the ramp. Tomorrow after this trench is inspected and backfilled, I will set the little oil/water separator. I don't care for the thumb, but since it is on there I use it to move my buckets around and it is handy for doing other contractor's jobs, like gently getting rebar bundles out of the way. When I am digging in a box, the thumb is a pain. Deep 2' wide ditch is also a pain, as the frankensteins are wider than the bucket. It is not enough of a hassle to completely re-tool the excavator. I have already decided that the next deep double stack job I will rent a 200-ish with appropriate bucket and NO thumb. My guess is there will be approximately one of those before I retire The whole job steps down 4' and that little chunk of 10" in the first picture below and behind me is the sleeve for one of the lines. The general wants me to be done to that non-existent wall by Friday. I explained *once* the wall needed to be backfilled before we set that pipe, but it made his head hurt. I quit 'splaining at that point.
Skyking1 don’t claim to be a plumber, but that ol’e boy can lay some pipe!
I can dig it!
I will take a higher shot tomorrow, the first half of the upper level of building is poured out, there is 200+' of pipe under that.
OK I forgot, but now I have a fancy Liebherr to take pictures of tomorrow. It rolled in today to get set up and assemble the tower crane. It looks pretty stout, it had a 5 axle jeep under the boom.
I rented a 300 with 2 buckets from H&E there right after they opened- delivered it with the small bucket on & the thumb was way wider than the bucket. I was scratching my head why someone didn't notice that before they sent it out.
DAVID WILCOX - Layin Pipe - YouTube
Welder Dave, LMAO!! Never heard of David Wilcox. That’s awesome.
I backfilled that trench yesterday and promptly made a new pile of dirt next to it. we dug out for the oil/water separator and daylighted the pipe. Getting ready to set the oil/water structure inside the 8x8 aluminum trench box. Something is wrong with this picture.
The crane is a Liebherr LTM 1300 6.2, a 360 ton with 256 feet of main boom. Thatś a heckofa jeep for the boom! It was a little breezy by the time they were setting the boom. The tag line guy was getting a workout on the ground. They hung a couple of more sections on the boom, I am guessing it has 240´ The tower is only about 120' high.
Nobody took the bait on that third picture with the shoring, so Iĺl spill the beans. Note all the gravel and stuff on that new tank? That was the second time I set it. They decided to daylight that pipe so I did not have enough pea gravel, I ran at lunchtime to get more. Iḿ almost back and get this call, we floated the tank! They had pumped down the tests on those 3 pipes, but clearly not enough. When they popped off the caps, the water ended up in the hole i had dug, and they were sciencing now I get parked and there sits that tank, all askew floating in the pea gravel at a 30 degree slant. OK that sucks. Then I hear the story and it s a gut buster. The plumber is standing on the tank, supervising his guys, and it slowly starts floating up. My main helper is watching and the plumber is clueless as to what is happening. Once it started to go, it came up at that 30 degree angle and he is surfing the tank going "*** is happening?¨ That was a missed Kodak moment if ever there was one We talk about floating tanks, caution people about filling them, etc, and then they get a lesson not soon forgotten.
Interesting circumstance. Really caught the surfing plumber off-guard and took a moment to recognize the situation. I wasn’t familiar with the phenomena until recently. The new Costco in Fairbanks installed USTs at the gas station and the trucking company we hired to deliver the fuel was a couple days late with the delivery. The contractor was freaking out because the tanks were starting to move.
It for sure is a thing. Concrete septic tanks will come up too.
I need a septic installed after the snow melts. The outhouse concept is getting old. I’m getting old. Skyking, fiberglass? Concrete?, plastic? One bed, one bath. Ground perks fine. As per the MatSu Borough, I can watch a video, take a quiz and get a permit to do it myself. Probably not worth the learning curve when there are lots of contractors available that can do it. What’s your schedule look like?
Snort! The mobe would be prohibitive If they sell plastic tanks up there, that would be great. The thing that goes bad on septic tanks are the baffles on the inlet and outlet.
Lol. Thought I’d ask.
IF you can hold it for two years we will drive up after we retire
We did the site work for 2 large gas stations in 2018. We dug the tank hole on one and the tank setting guys dug the other one. Talking to the head guy one day I asked him how they kept the tanks in the ground between the initial backfill and first delivery of fuel as it was a couple of months between the two. His answer was we fill them with water like a septic tank. Curious, I asked how do you get all the water out before the first gas dump and he replies "we do our best to pump most of it out". He then proceeded to say don't buy any fuel here for a couple of months after the store opens...
We were setting type 30 catch basins and an oil water separator in a detail shop remodel. i had to dig under a 9' ceiling, luckily I did not have to track it clear outside. There was a 12' center area with jut enough room to get into the truck.
The older I get the less patience I have for jobs like that. How do you like the 35G?
It's pretty sweet, the cab is a little tight in and out, but good once I am in. After having it for a while i think the long stick/extra counterweight configuration would have had a nice balance, but I really can't tolerate a tail swing in my typical situation. They had to hunt this one down with the regular stick/cab. I requested the cab from the get-go with my boss.
While we were away from the big job, all heck broke loose. I was hoping they did not dig the big footing at my only ramp in, but no. The plumber went by and took pictures and sent me this one. That's my machine sitting with the back toes almost in the alley. Tomorrow we may crane the mini in with the tower crane. Pea gravel will be coming in with a concrete bucket and trimmie, via tower crane.
I ran the 120 into the alley and snaked the mini in there, carrying my digging bucket and hoe pack. Lots of tossing the tools ahead, then moving @#%%% out of the way, and crawling in. Now I have that corner of the site so chopped up with trenches and piles that we are waiting on inspection to do anything else. spoils piles 2' from trenches? Ha! Maybe when somebody is actually piping it, then it is dirt almost to the edge of everything.
My mean assed superintendent loved cutting the access off for all the lifts on the front of the addition. He warned the glass guys to make arrangements for their two lifts on the right side of the pick as he was coming through with 18" RCP. They ignored the "advice" and kept on working. Oh well.. Of course we had to wait for the city inspector to give his blessing.. .
I saw that picture in your thread, look at all that room. Spoiled I say, spoiled with all that real estate.
After I had backfilled the branch lines, I had to tunnel under them to bring the electrician along. I have been digging in his 3 2" for the whole length of the job. I'd rather it was me digging around our pipe. The plumbing and the electrician had inspection cycles, and there was never enough room or logistics to have both sets of trenches open at the same time. There is very little undisturbed dirt left on the job.
No doubt I would rather have our crews dig around our pipe. Nothing worse than repairing what a dumb ass tore out. I wish the GC's would do similar here as far as one sub digging the underground trades. Instead the plumbers have their "operator" and the sparky's have their stick puller - I wouldn't call them operators in quotation marks. Their is always an argument over who's responsible for spoils haul off in which we usually get the CO to haul off. It's a mess.
So far the dirt contractor has tagged two of the floor cleanouts with his rented CTL, putting down cap break. He's a good guy though and we work well together.
I spent most of day inside a 2000 gallon grease interceptor, installing the baffles and mudding the sand collars and the divider. The young fellow that usually does this has Covid-19 and is home sick. I set up the gear and tested the atmosphere for 2 hours to be sure it was clear. I had a young fellow there as an attendant, but I did not want to try and direct him. He payed attention and I think he could jump in there next time. The last thing we did was mobe the mini into the new location, via tower crane.
Good job. Gotta take confined spaces seriously. What kind of monitor do you have?
MSA 4x , typical 4 gas unit. I'll take a couple o pics tomorrow. I "dug" in some plumbing today. The foundation walls are not poured or backfilled inside, so there is little dirt to work with. Pipes will be 9" above a giant footing at the shallow end. The dirt contractor has allowed me to use his Hitachi 135 to toss in bedding. I will put 11 tons over the fence and forms and pile it on the footing to set our pipe on. I will use a dirt averaging method to try and get 6" of cover over 80% of the pipe and no cover over that last bit. There's just no upside to barely covering it. He'll be in there with a skidsteer track machine right after me. If it is exposed pea gravel he'll be more careful, and I will offer to stay in there and build it up with the mini ahead of him. I can't get out anyway till after he ramps in
Same one we have. It's a good unit for the price.
I picked up Mini Mee yesterday morning, then took a nap and worked a graveyard this AM. These things have terrible tie down points, as in none! The little hole in the carbody barely took two cargo strap hooks. I will bring a big shackle for demob. Hold my beer. No pedal steering means no graceful bucket assists either. Looking from shallow to deep on one run, through a wall that stays.
Forgot these pics. They dropped me in on the big footing beyond yellow plumber, where the plumbing will be in the air. I dug in part of it, they got a partial inspection, then I backfilled my way up onto that. One way trip baby! I had a big pile of dirt behind him that I put over the pipe that is now under me, and used those 2x4's to crawl up one track between the two pipes under those bits of plastic and the other on the dirt that was where the orange plumber is grading. Same spot, one way cranked to spin. Did I mention the columns? One is right behind me to the left too, that run goes the other side of it and the two runs go between them.
We have a busy service department, and they started on a leak repair for a large cold storage facility last week. It was very elusive and the water went 50' along the pipe before surfacing, and then did some really weird stuff. They got out an experienced leak locator and he pinned it down pretty good. Today they had a vac truck there and found the pipe and leak. It was a bad fusion weld on 4" HDPE. I had not seen a bad joint like that before. It has a double curl, but I think it was not cut to match and was contaminated. it looks like a dry joint to me. They fixed it with a romac. I dangled the shoring in there with the mini to facilitate setting that up, there was irrigation down one side and some big voids to work around. I started caving in the voids I can and they will do some saw cutting for me to get at the rest. The paving plus ATB is 8" thick, and there is 1' plus of recycle concrete beneath that which is as hard as it gets. the voids are in sandy material below all that.
put a couple stamps on that thing and send it to me when you`re done
I went out on another repair job this afternoon, another leaking private main. The leak was massive, maybe 200 GPM. There was a 2" line tapped off an 8" ductile iron main, with a valve box with water boiling up out of it. The water utility had cut back the flow to a bare minimum to retain water purity in the main. We popped up the asphalt and had a vac truck do the excavation, as i would be working blind under all that water flow and do more harm than good. The valve box had been wearing on the 2" nipple for years, and cut hole or two n it. The subsequent high pressure leak had eroded away the cast iron valve body. It was a pretty impressive show of how much damage water can do.
The leak was blasting up inside the soil pipe, which redirected it across the top of that bonnet with that sand solution. It just ate on that bonnet and bolt!
Thats a great picture! A good friend of mine had a saying about the amazing properties of water. " It floats battle ships and moves mountains" I always think of that saying when working around anything associated with water. Was on a job where a 6" ductile pipe was cracked due to a 8" diameter rock sitting against it. The rock broke the pipe, but then the water leak cut half way through the rock. Couldn't say how long it was leaking but it made a cool looking rock just like your valve.
Wow - that's impressive! That has been leaking for a while to do that much wear on the valve. I guess ya'lls sandy/glacial till soils gave a place for the leaking water to go over the years until it really started leaking? Our clay soils would've produced that leak to the surface well before that much wear showed. City is replacing the 6" PVC line that runs down the road in front of my house with a 10" ductile line. The original PVC line was installed in the early 80's and the limestone it was trenched into has rubbed it raw in many places for lack of a better term. Proper pipe spec, installation and bedding is imperative for a long lasting install.
It ran just under the pavement, and made it's way into nearby catchbasin. Nobody noticed that it was lifting up the asphalt 1" in the process! I should drive by and take a pic of that. The pavement is 1" proud of the adjacent curb.
Are you guys required to use poly pipe wrap on ductile? We have to use it up here in Ohio, but its not 100% enforced.
this is concrete lined ductile iron water main. No wrap on that. It has a black paint on the outside.
We are not required to wrap our ductile here although I've seen a couple of times in the spec's.
We here in Chicago land area have to bag ductile iron water main in a lot of cities
. Yup, thats what we have to wrap up with poly. And tape any cut, or opening in the wrap. They want it as sealed up as possible. We even wrap the valves. Just curious what other areas have for codes.
I've not seen that here and I'm glad sounds like a real pain!
As a civilian, I read this, and can't understand half the topics. Talk about specialization!!! Daylight? Floated tank? Pumped down the tests? Sciencing?
Well a pre-cast concrete 1000/1500 gal septic tank or grease trap can float out of the hole in high water table soils or a hole water is flowing into in sky's case if you don't fill the tank with water first.
Daylighting is when you dig a trench at the same grade until it pops out of the Earth. All of the plumbing is put under water test it's filled up with water and then there's a 10 ft pipe so it has 10 ft of head pressure on all the joints. Plastic tanks like that float really well! You're supposed to fill them up with water, but they hadn't gotten to that part yet. When they released all that water, it went down in the hole I had dug for that tank, and floated it right on up out of there.
I did a little "government job" weekend before last for one of the guys. He wanted to tear up his yard, put in an RV parking area, and keep all the dirt on site. Also, demo and remove a patio slab. To start, he had a nice little wall that was going to go. I mobed in on Saturday started at 8, and stripped 1.5 loads of sod off and to the pit and picked up a load of Lynch Creek blue gravel before the pit closed at 1 PM. I set up the laser and did some shots, and made a constant 1.6% from the back to the ground just through the gate. I hogged out the 13.5' off the fence to that grade minus 3" for rock and piled it next to me as I cut. Then I demoed enough of that slab out of the way and we laid down fabric and graveled. It was a real PITA but that was how I had to do it. Nowhere to dump the gravel, I had to dip it out of the truck. Coming through the gate. Notice the power lines? Cable TV? The concrete proved to be a problem. We had an electric jackhammer, but there was too much and it was a bit tough. They had poured one patio, and later poured another 6" over the top of that. I could pry under it and full expected some breaking, but it was tough and stayed stuck together too. We made a plan for me to get a rental hammer for the mini and I did that Monday. Sunday I hauled off 4 tons that I could break down to 3' minus, Monday another 8 tons, and I still had 3 tons left. That slab you see was 15 tons! It was 10~11" in most places. Monday I hauled 4 loads from the back to the front yard, and dug out that wall. I was not going to handle the blocks, so I dug the dirt out from behind it and left the blocks for younger backs.
Clearances It was no better through he gate either, as that big tree was low. I suggested that we put sewer water power across for the RV and i had most of the pipe in my stash at home. There is an existing block wall in front of the fence, and we excavated for putting a new wall in front of that one. I cut it in at 0.5% with steps in the base course to work with the 1.6% road slope. I will return later this summer with the last 6 tons of gravel to finish to that wall, and out front of the gate. He has a lot of work to do, moving that greenhouse, building walls, and a new wider gate. I had a few tons of sand left over so that is there for him to set the blocks on.
Good call on the sewer/water/power for the RV. Our RV trailer is at our yard with a 50 AMP plug on the pole but it's not close to water or the sewer so we have to drag a hose out across the parking area. I've got a small sewer ejector pump for our small office but no 50 AMP service near. I've got some trenching and conduit work to do.
I left it behind his gate over the weekend as shown in the "after"picture, and he asked that I leave the door unlocked. Grandson discovered that the horn is powered without the key
The dog is thinking damn, this thing could bury my bone in no time!
He's been hard at it, and has most of that block wall started. Then he started with a block border to keep the gravel out of the grass.
I started a grease interceptor install last week. I am putting in a 1500 gallon and abandoning a 10,000 and another odd little round one. The grease was so old and caked the pump truck could not get it all, so I have a vactor truck coming back for the worst of it. Boss had bid it with me and a helper, but I am picking away at it by myself for as long as I can. I have a core driller coming out to core the manhole and channel it for me, then the structure box is delivered one day and we will set the structure the next. I can haul the asphalt and gravel to an asphalt plant only a few minutes away, which is huge nice. My pea gravel is a bit farther at a 45 minute round, and that 10K gallon tank is going to drink about 10 solo loads.
I dug it down to get a couple of loads gone and look for buried treasure. I was not disappointed. Oddball poly line in a 4" PVC sleeve. Hmm, the mysteries of construction. Note the round lid by the bucket teeth. That is a 4' round 11' deep steel grease tank from 40 years ago. IF I keep that good pit run clean i can dump it for free. The tie in is up a walk alley behind the building. i saw cut it the other day, and stripped it out with the 120. I dug that far end with the mini so I would not have to track the old asphalt to death, as there was no spinning in there with the 120. We set the box Wednesday and the structure yesterday morning and pulled the box by 1100.
Damn that's tight. Find any other buried treasure along the way?
That poly in a 4" sleeve ran almost the whole way in my dig. The grease lines from the kitchen ran to a concrete sump in the original construction. There was a pump in there that pushed it up that poly to the steel tank. So that was grease system #1 It dumped into that private sewer manhole I had my mishap in. It was the worst channeling job I had ever seen. The day I got hurt I had fixed that mess with 2 bags of fast set. I have pictures of what I found there when I did a preconstruction inspection months ago. Some time later, they tear up the whole lot, and hammer out the side of the concrete sump and run a 4" SDR35 pipe out to a *10,000* gallon grease interceptor! Grease system #2 The county has determined that these giant tanks were a giant mistake, as they sit far too long between pumpings and become very strange science experiments. The new business has to install a new 1500 to open. That's where I come in with Grease system #3
Yes I found an unlocated gas line to a big fireplace inside at that brick chimney and dug under/around that. It was probably to a propane tank 40 years ago, but we treated it as if it was live.
I pulled off that job to start a big church job. It is our glacial till, very low soil content and sometimes really big potatoes. The ditches are wide and fragile banks. I am educating the plumbers to travel up and down the trenches and not just try to jump in any old place. That's about a 35 load of a rock.
I'll get some pictures up of the grease interceptor I have going. SDR35 6" and Kor-n-boot seals from Trellborg. I have only one sand collar at the baffle. The boot seal caused a headache at the tie in.
Is that a pre-cast curb or retainer wall? Interesting.
footings
I am bouncing back to the grease interceptor job when I can. I hauled a load of pea gravel in to bed the pipe and fill/abandon that weird 4' x 11' round grease interceptor. It took a couple of 11.25 degree bends to get the pipe in the ditch. That is a concrete sump that had a pump in it, that pumped the whole kitchen drain load around to that little round tank. The next system they broke out the side of the sump and put in the huge tank. The storm pipe was part of my ditch, especially at that first cleanout. The municipality wanted a Kor-N-Seal boot into the existing manhole, when a sand collar would do fine. It caused a few headaches because there was a huge knockout that I had to avoid to get some good material to set the boot into.
A 10,000 gallon interceptor? Somebody at the health dept was on the crack huh lol
Interesting..pre-cast footings.
no those are poured in place. there is a 2" insulation board on the inside, with a 45 at the top.
They thought it was a good idea, bigger being better. Much better at growing weird science experiments!!
The forms were misaligned prior to pouring and it looks like pre-cast sections but I see the heavy chamfer on top is continuous. Fooled me.
We got into the deeps and are setting speed shoring. It is running gravel and not good for shoring, but we are getting it done. Note the gap for the string line. Plumbers are fond of string lines.
Ah plumbers and string lines lol. Not gonna lie though, we still rock a string when we're in a plant and there's lots of stuff in the way of the ol laser.
I'm starting a new dig on Tuesday and today I loaded some structures to the job site. I just put them in the back of the dump truck, a type 2 and a lid, and 5 type 30s. the tower crane picked them out of my dump truck and they hid them wherever they could out of the way.
Sky are those 5 story wood framed apartments over a concrete podium/parking garage? That type of construction seems to be the rage.
sounds about right, and the one I am working on is the same ownership and probably very similar. 380 units in two distinct towers over a common parking garage/retail facing the street.
Affirmative on the wood framed construction over a parking garage. We did the site work on the building in the foreground a few years ago. The walls, for the most part, were constructed on the ground and lifted into place with the tower crane.
Mobed onto the job Monday with both excavators. Started Tuesday and set a type 2, backfilled and started another dig yesterday, and today we finished the dig, set the 6x6x6 build-a-box structure shoring, set the other type 2, dug for the oil/water separator, hopped the box forward, and set that too. All the picks save that little plastic separator were done with the tower crane. Poor little 35 was hanging its toes digging those holes! I was dug out the bottom of that 6' tall box another 18" They filled it with water ASAP, as we are getting a continuous stream of rain for the next few days. I'm not concerned about the 6400 pound type 2 stack, but that 200 pound plastic structure is quite buoyant. It is also very tight in that structure box, maybe 5" total clearance to pull the box up off it. I chocked it in there with a yard or so of pea gravel and full of water it should resist any effort to displace it while we pull the box. That's it for bigger structures and deep digging. Now I will be trenching from 4' on up and setting type 30 catchbasins.
30 basins, that's a lot of basins for labors to run over lol.
LOL they are on foot so no harm no foul.
That's good, labors on lulls are sure death to catchs, vaults, pull boxes, valve boxes lol
My mini will have to fly out with the tower crane, and the only other iron down there is the dirt guys and they look competent.
I loaded out a full truck of pea gravel into the concrete bucket, and the tower crane delivered it to the plumbers. The pipe is shaded and ready for inspection tomorrow.
@skyking1 Do you have more pictures or specs of that speed shoring? I've been looking for something like that for little holes that can be used with plywood. Rent build a box when I have to, but for some little jobs it would be nice to avoid renting and have something that works on any size hole.
speed shoring tops out at about 6' wide hole and for good reason, hard to insure it will keep integrity. https://www.speedshore.com/vertical-shores
We had 2" or rain overnight, but the ground is good and drank it up. Still no inspection and I will not go down there with a load of pea gravel in the truck and wait for it. The general contractor would like that, they ask for that and we have made it policy to never do it. I will take PTO first before that fool's folly.
Perfect thanks. Was hoping they were manual ones, utility company here uses them basically like screw jacks, works really slick just not sure where to get them. Like the idea of just turning them by hand and not needing a bunch of other stuff. Generally I find if it's much over 6' width i'm not worried about shoring as it's enough room to cut the banks back.
These are hydraulic pistons that use water.
How do you like the build-a-box shoring? Slightly related to the thread, I'll be installing a 1500 gallon grease and some welded HDPE next week.
I thought it was pretty handy I haven't seen the bill yet.
It's expensive the last time we rented from Trench Plate Rental last year. Build A Box was double the rental of a regular orange steel box the same size. They charge for every piece - corners, bolts, lifting eyes, etc.. Also have to be careful with it as the panels have an aluminum skin and structural foam of some sort inside. Easy to put a tooth through one. The system is fairly labor intensive putting it together and taking it apart compared to a steel box. All in all it's great for certain shoring conditions but we try to use steel boxes where ever we can.
Since I was flying it in at the end of a tower crane's reach, the added cost for aluminum was worth it IMO. I could also wiggle it up with my 35 mini. Steel? not so much
Dirt contractor was changing out some old tracks on the midsize mini with the smaller mini for a prybar. That track was half gone through.
Best tool for rubber track work.
The owner wants a temporary loading dock ramp put in behind the office. I ran down to pick up the 120 from the downtown job. It was a little congested with a couple of CAD trucks delivering cap break into the hole, and the shotcrete guys setting up a pump. I backed over the curb, loaded and drove down the road a block to chain down in peace. The gravel pit had these oversized ecology blocks in a huge stack, and were selling them for $20 each. I figured they would do for this job. The guys at the pit said they were close to 4 tons each. That looked wrong so I measured ( 32" x 36" x 67" ) and came up with 6500 pounds. I did not deduct for the fork slots on two sides, so I was pleasantly surprised to have them scale at 6120# 4 tons would be a deal breaker for the 120. They are a bit of a PITA with two lifting cables, and I thought no way could i thumb them off but again I was pleasantly surprised. If I rolled them away as I grabbed them, I could get enough traction with about a 30 degree lean on them. I can haul 4 easily and 5 is a bit of a stretch. The gravel pit is too close to worry about production. I will haul 4 and probably get about 30 of them.
My picture above is broken, I wonder what is up with that? I loaded a couple of rounds of block Friday, after setting frame and grates and manhole at the big job. Today I finished up that part, bringing a total of 27 blocks for 167,000 pounds. The demo operator at the pit got tired of swapping out a hammer or magnet on the 300 to load them, so he walked over this 800 with thumb. It should have a 'godzilla' soundtrack with it I rarely see a hoe that big with thumb. usually they are main line digging or working a pit. He grabbed two blocks and walked over, but put them on one at a time. When thumb buckets get that big, they no longer measure them in cubic yards. The unit of measure is 'hurts'. This thing has a whole lot of 'hurts' Hardhat on it for scale. I like the custom plasma cut nameplate on the side, just in case you misplace your bucket.
And its a progressive style thumb aswell. That would be fun to tear **** up with it.
I got some help setting the blocks, and damned if they were all I could handle with the 120. When I was thumbing them, I had that little bit of height advantage. Once I added in rigging I ran out of power. I trucked out 3 loads and probably have 8 more there. We dug slots and set the 3 sides and tossed the junk in the middle, after I stripped off about a foot of good gravel. The material is mostly clay, not too sweet. The plan is to export that clay, overexcavate a bit, and then finish it with the pile of gravel I stripped.
I got it all cut and the lowest 20 feet of the ramp is the soft clay you can drop a digging bar right into. Bad news. I have a scheduling crisis so I will work it tomorrow. The dirt guy on my downtown job donated a couple of 20' pieces of 7.5' fabric. There is water now, so i will pump that out, over ex the bad spot about a foot, fabric, and beat in some 4" to 8" spalls. I'd rather have 6" minus but availability on the weekend is hit or miss. I can give it a little vibe and then top it with the re-used crush rock I stripped off. I had a load on the truck and proof rolled the top third OK.
I sliced up a piece of 10" for a pump chamber, filled the void across the end of the dock with pea gravel, and pumped it for a while. The clay came out like soft butter. There was no hoe-packing that wet mess. I went with 2x4 rock and tracked it in gently. It was a little pumpy but the empty truck did not leave marks in the 2x4 rock. The truck was a nasty mess, and then I backed over some nasty stuff at the dump site and spent about an hour with a garden hose and shovel getting it road ready again. Sounds bad, but it was time well spent. The dump site was another employee's yard just around the corner from my house, and the company probably saved ~2400 in dump fees. I will move the 120 there and cuff it all out and track it in next year. That will lead to another hour long cleaning session on the tracks
Nice work! $2400 in dump fees? Man I'm not charging enough..
It was 11 loads at ~ 11 tons. It had junk and concrete rubble in it that most pits around here won't take, so I would have been hand sorting out the crap. Moral of the story is never bury anything, Murphy will make sure you will dig there again. This crap was buried at least 25 years ago. Tripping over a dollar to save a dime!
I'm thinking I will smear some of my recycled gravel over those 2x4 later, and let it filter down in a few months. It should skin over even better.
So you had to haul it to the "grab your ankles and go across the scale" landfill. Wish I could find a source of mafia blocks here. Redimix companies here dump all extra concrete into the wash recycler or so I've been told.
I was able to haul it all to a neighbor who wanted the fill.
I see now - saved - reading comprehension is important.
I mobilized the 120 back to the shop yesterday, and today I picked up the mini after they flew out of the hole.
I helped the service guys with a water line replacement yesterday and today. It was on a steep pair of driveways and we pulled the new pex in through the existing poly as far as we could. After that point the existing line took off toward the neighbors and started diving deep, until we lost track of it. We had cut the service and put a fish tape in there, and put a signal on that for the rigid locator. I started trenching and got right into a big spring coming down the driveway about 2' down. Fun times. The fellows elected to not give me a saw cut by that step, and it was poured on the asphalt. Where is the facepalm emoticon? This place does not have enough emoticons. They had a 60 lb. electric jackhammer and sliced it there for me.
I had a job to dig for a kitchen and bathroom group under an existing pole barn roof. That was both good and bad. Valley soil in December? Under a roof. Good. digging on the outside of the row of poles? Not so good. I had to pack all the dirt away a bucket at a time, I did not even have room to swing. Mostly trench and a giant pile of dirt, and the excavator is cornered until inspection and I can backfill my way out of there.
The loading dock is proving to be handy. 1) the 6% slope is great for naturally draining out the bed. I used to have to raise it and drain out the giant puddle, now it is simply gone. 2) Today I loaded the tools for the first time where I could look down on the bed. Bonus!
No good deed goes unpunished. One of the plumbing foremen had a sewer blockage at his home. Orangeburg pipe I am standing by and illuminating the tie in. It is gumbo clay and I will be an hour getting the machine presentable. I have a job to mob onto in the morning. No good deed goes unpunished.
They are fortunate to have you.
Thank you for the kind words. I got home about 9. He wanted to pay me and I said no, if we are doing a planned project that is one thing. ( I did a bunch of work there earlier) When it is an emergency, you just go and help. The boss is gracious to provide the equipment and inventory, I am down for helping out.
Like the rebar safety cap holding up the A/C unit.
We dug a mind bender set of trenches today through a core and shell job. The grease line is exiting downhill away from me @1%, and the sanitary is on a bench running downhill toward me on the left, @1%. The plumber has not started installing the sanitary, that is the grease pipe sitting on the handy bench. I got very familiar with setting negative and positive slope with the laser remote. Dig a short bit, reset the laser and target and dig the other trench, repeat.
I'm digging a nursing home expansion with a garage. The general did not have a path for me to get out of the garage and into the other section. The footings were too green , the tower crane too weak. I had to keep this elevator shaft clear for the waterproofing crew, so I built a little bench past it and put one track on the nearby footing. This is another case for wanting the 35 rather than the 50.
The plumbers had to tunnel under a pair of footings through CDF. There are 3 pipes going in this trench, so I dug it with my 42" cleanup bucket. I reached across with the 18" and did about 90% of the tunnel from the inside on this small footing. The general was going to have the site contractor dig a trench across this trench, and above it at the same time I was doing this. How about no? Where that trench was going is now a huge spoils pile, LOL. The benches were not for depth. The bottom of the trench is in native, but the gray type 17 import above that was very loose in the top couple of feet. That bench represents where it started to behave and stand up. Above that it was like dry dunes, it just flowed. On another job the site guys had a 916 Cat loader. It is the only one i have seen! Plenty of 920, the IT28, 950's on up but never a 916.
I stopped by the pit quarry tonight for a load of pea gravel and spotted this pair of orange double-knuckled wall swallowers. I took my time on the scales, as I had the empty tilt trailer. I was shocked to see less than 1000 pounds on the pintle, and 9500 overall for the trailer. I figured I would take a little hit on my load, but it was negligible.
That 916 looks like a handy size loader. We had a CAT 904b on our farm for loading feed wagon for several years. We put over 12,000 hours on that little baby loader before repairs got to be burdensome. The 904 was undersized for what we were asking it to do.
I get home and the power company service crew is over at the neighbor. He is down about 70 volts on one leg and they determined it to be in the direct bury wire from meter to disconnect. The company mini is now landlocked and I also have the 120 on the job, so I will rent a 35 from the Cat dealer and bring it home tomorrow night, and dig in a new conduit with wire.
Several UG utility companies around here ran 916's back in the 80's and 90's. They are a good size for sewer and water projects.
I seem to recall the 916 got renamed to something else as time went on. Does anyone else remember if that is true or not?
The Cat dealer really wants my business. He made me a fine deal on a 303.5 rental. I got it picked up, and dug the trench in the dark for the power line. A giant cottonwood stump was right up against the pole and over the wire, and probably killed it. I tried every thing I could to get him to cut those trees down when they were small. We ended up using a boom lift in 2020 to get them down safely, but the damage was done.
I sneaked between these lovely trees with the new trench in the dark Thursday night.
Here is a report on the Cat 303.5E2 The travel pedals are annoying. Easy enough to foot it forward, but any amount of backing up will have you going for the handles. Definitely not a fan of that. It feels more bobby/tippy fore and aft with blade up. The float option, that sucks. I want the blade down to dig over, now, no monkeying around. The boom offset shifts a long ways to the left, that was nice. Other "features". Compared to the JD, it has giant pockets for collecting dirt sticks mud in the middle, right around the travel motor hoses. Really a bad design. In the JD the hoses are protected, and there are a couple of castings that are easy to clean for daily transporting. This particular machine was ill prepared to go out for rental. About 4 hours in I got the dreaded rough dying engine from a filter full of dirt/water. I cleaned it up and loaded it on the trailer ( more rough running from that climb ) to return to NC machinery. One would think they would just sump every machine every time. It is a catch-22. Customers don't want to pay dealer price for fuel, but they have no quality control over the fuel. All a rental dealer can do is sump sump sump. They failed. Travel brakes made noise. That was something I had not heard before. retainer pin for thumb cylinder fell out and thumb pin had to be monitored and pushed back into place several times.
Sounds like a typical rental machine. As far as operation goes I agree on the tippyness of the 303.5 that's why I bought a 305E2 - night and day difference in operation and balance and not that much heavier. Haven't had any issue with debris around the travel motor hoses. Don't use the float option on a mini so no comment.
I don't either. But there it is when I go to put the blade down to dig. This thing was tippy compared to my cab equipped 35G, so going for more of an apples to apples comparison. The job I am on now the 305/50 would have been a liability.
Most company rental machines there are lucky to see a recommended service let alone get cleaned. Many machines don't see a shop in three years. Most just go from one rental to the next to the next and so on. Many times they are sold off a job and we couldn't get the rental company to bring the machine in to be prepped for the sale. The company didn't put telematics on the rental machines so no one ever knew how many hours were getting put on them unless it broke and the renter called for repair.
they are getting it back with hours to spare on an 8 hour rental, and an earful about their **** poor services.
It won’t bother them at all. I doubt anyone will even give you sympathy.
I just bitch to get $$$ off.
they fixed it, and I picked it up after work with a cleanup bucket and backfilled the job in the dark. I still have hours left on the rental.
Back to the jobsite, this one is by far the best recent example of not wanting a bigger mini. This was today.
Busy fun day on the job Wednesday. We had excavated inside a building with vac trucks to re-route a sewer line for a remodel. The trench was ~8' deep, 4' wide and 50'+ long, and inside an operating care facility. The piping was all done and connected and we needed to backfill, so we hired a bark blower truck to blow pea gravel in through the windows with a hose. I had mobilized the 120 excavator the day before, and today I hauled in 5 loads of pea gravel. I dipped it out of my truck and dumped into the bark truck, one hour round trips and kept them working and not driving to get more gravel. We placed 72 tons of gravel in 6 hours. It was my first go with blowing in pea gravel. It went as well as it could. The shallow end, just getting started. I never had time to go back as I was busy hauling and loading it into their truck
Why pea gravel? Can they blow sand in too, or is there a reason for the pea gravel? We had this done at our farm a couple years ago, but I wasnt there when they did it so I dont know what they blew in. We had a 100,000 gallon under the barn manure pit that we abandoned and needed to be filled in. Hiring a blow in rig was the most economical way to get the out filled in.
Probably due to compaction. Similar sized pea gravel, like #57 crushed limestone we have, will be at 95% compaction just dumped in trench.
That's has to be cheaper than pumping flowable.
yes instant compaction. a quick cost breakdown: I mobed in the day before, mobed out the same day. I billed 12 hours between the truck and excavator at ~$120 = $1440 Bark truck was a flat $3600 72 tons of pea gravel at $21 per ton = $1512 total ~ $6550 just getting the dirt out with vac truck? $20K ++ I did not price CDF. I suspect it is ~$120 per yard so 52 yards is $6220, plus a pump and crew. Plus cleanup.
They did flowable at the nuke to also receive resilience in the compacted material yet capable to dig thru, pea gravels would continue to flow on dig outs where the trench turned into a pit to retain safe working conditions. Pea Gravel pits around the site became pump station locations for ground water pumps as that became a larger looming issue.
yes pea gravel is a liability on a return dig. We stubbed up in a couple of places and one was abandoned below grade and noted on an as-built, so a returning plumber could hook something up without having to go down to the main line.
I need to buy a vac truck.
no, they are a huge PITA. that was a lot of hauling off in there and two guys and a ton of moving parts to break.
Actually we've kicked around the idea of a vac excavation component for our business over the last couple of years. Couple of discussions and a thread here on HEF. It's a huge investment with a lot of wear parts but the earning potential is there and the business model is scaleable with potential to sell to a larger company once a market share is established. Just thoughts at this point.
Even the little burg we live outside of has one, use to minimize disturbance of compacted soils replacing water or gas system valves. Worker said paod for itself in three years and is parked a LOT!
Vac trucks are awesome but man are they a hog for maintenance I like the idea of owning one but the learning curve is steep enough with a trailer trucks a whole another ball game We had job that we had to protect trench integrity for a month so we backfilled with pea gravel that way when we went back we used a vacuum to suck out the gravel in no time
this was the 3rd pick in two days for the minion. It's just one of those sites. This is where it was sitting this morning, straddling and surrounded by trenches.
The minion is back on the sidewalk, having flown 6 times in and out of remote areas on the job in 4 days. I had the assistance of a great operator in the tower crane and good bellman, although I would signal the tower the old fashioned way whenever I needed to. Today we placed drain rock in 18" wide trenches lined with fabric, using a Gar-Bro 2 yard concrete bucket. It's touchy work, really easy to wash your fabric into the hole and make a real mess of things but it went flawlessly, due in large part to that tower operator. I'd yell out commands and the bellman stayed up top and relayed my commands to the operator.
I mobed back to that job this morning and placed 2.5 tons of pea with the concrete bucket, dumped the balance of the truckload at another site where I had robbed the site guy's pile on the weekend. Then it was back to the pit to get 2.27 tons of drain rock. It's a bugger because I have no place at all to store material on this site, nor do I have a spare machine at the yard to load from a pile so I get material in strategic amounts. I was aiming to get one bucket full and this is how that worked out: At the end of the day we hopped the mini into what real estate was available on this tight high rise site.
How is that 120 doing?
I have not heard much from the new guy. It worked fine for me, much tighter now. It has always had good power and travel and swing.
No pictures just all elbows today. I had no plumber or helper and dug out a Tenant Improvement (TI) in a new tilt up by myself, up and down on the machine in the ditch with shovel, broom, wheelbarrowing in the bedding because the general wanted plywood down to protect the polished floors and wheelbarrow was easier and faster than moving plywood. At least I could load it with the 18" bucket and mini. The 18" is a perfect normal wheelbarrow load of pea gravel. I got in 18K steps on the fitbit and a bunch of cardio. Then I mobed down to the hirise job, dropped off the mini, and grabbed a load of pea for the job up north, and will run there early tomorrow. GO GO GO! They want me to get the 20 ton tilt off that site so that will get done.
Randles has a mountain of quartz and granite scrap. They run it through a crusher now and then, I have not inquired about the products. My other materials account has recycled materials too. The current deal there is 3/4 asphalt @$6 per ton.
$6 a ton for crushed asphalt is cheap. Ordered a 25 ton load of waste rock and it was $385 delivered about 10 miles from the quarry. Cheapest rock we can get. We used to be able to get millings here almost free until the state and county DOT started to require all the millings be recycled and a credit back to them on the resurfacing projects. Not quite sure how it all works.
Part of my job at the last dealer I worked for was to keep the used equipment yard smoothed out so people could drive through without getting all muddy or even stuck in the winter time. One large contractor that did a lot of milling used to give us all the stuff for free. I loved that stuff. I hadn't thought about having to pay for it now.
Same thing here. About 12 years ago, anyone could get in line for a milling project and get topped off. Now you have to be an authorized contractor with the state to haul, and everything off the mill goes to a predetermined dump site for further processing. When the state repaved M43 in Delton, my father in law took his dad's dump truck and hauled as many loads as he could get for his driveway. Only cost was fuel for the truck. Just pulled up in line and the miller would fill him up. Several local guys did the same.
When they repaved the road here several yrs ago, there were fliers in the mailboxes and a phone call was made. Ordered 5 boxes, set up lights on the dump area, and eventually when to bed. No trucks showed. Called again and the plant decided they were close enough that they would recycle all the milling. I guess we are too close to the plant.
I finished digging the last of the cottages in an assisted living expansion job. This one was a 4plex split on two levels, so basically a duplex. There is a couple hundred tons of export in the way that nobody wants to take responsibility to move, so I took down a fence, cut a notch in the berm and got my part done. Those are really deep open holes on each side of my little ramp. Not my circus, not my monkeys.
It must have taken a little while to load the truck with a mini/midi excavator.
not loading, getting pea gravel out for the plumbing. I used about a half box there and the rest at another job about an hour away, but it was not quite enough. I grabbed 4 tons of washed sand yesterday afternoon to finish that one this morning.
Yesterday started out with about 2 hours of sleep and 4 hours of carpal tunnel pain/numbness/burning. I went into the office and dropped the hammer, I was broken and needed fixing. I called a couple of my operator friends and one came through for me. The high point was my friend and fellow operator showed up, and working with him for a few hours before leaving the job to him. The day before I was working by myself, off and on the excavator and doing the grading and shoveling in the ditch, back on the machine, repeat. I blistered my hurting hand doing the shoveling and that probably was the last straw on the carpal tunnel. I am running the work from home, via pictures and video and texts. He is doing OK. The jobsite is as bad as I have ever seen. The material is completely unsuitable for backfill. I hit a greasy mud layer 3 feet down at the end of the deeper dig, and that slop was what I blistered my hand on. I cleaned it up to a firm base and put down a few inches of pea gravel and graded it yesterday. nobody else was going to do it right, so I got in the ditch and my friend brought me the gravel at my direction.
That’s the problem with you construction guys. “Jesus. That excavator just ran over your leg!” “It’s just a scratch. Just dump some gasoline over it and push the bone back inside. I got a job to finish. “
Get well soon, and rest God damn it. Your body is telling you to slow down.
Kind of like that final scene in Dr Strangelove.
You guys are artists!!!!
Ain't a Spring Chicken anymore!! I had carpal surgery Right hand in 2018, BEST thing I had done to cure issue with numbness inability to control fingers on tools, pain etc. Get it fixed, leave someone on the machine until FULLY heal then can go back to beating yourself as hard as I normally beat myself up!!
I thought about it, and I think those 3~4 days beating that concrete hot tub apart with the hammer was the beginning of the end for me. It makes sense.
Some pretty nice looking work you do there. Makes me feel like a true hacker on my excavator.
Time for you to stand aside and just tell the kids what you want done and how to do it. The joint damage is like arsenic. It just accumulates and never goes away. Good Luck!
My work can be very physical and I inflamed my carpal tunnel the other day and filed a claim on it. I took the paperwork to the employer today and they asked me " can you dig (operate the excavator)?", to which I replied, " I'd better not" due to the claim. They are likely wondering if I am of any use to them, and I don't think they realize I am thinking the same thing It was not my plan to retire at this moment, but it may be the right thing for me. We are rallying around my sister in her last weeks or months, we really don't know how long she has but it seems to be going fast now. It is nothing like retiring from mega-corp, I am an hourly union guy. I can just quit for a while, then call the hall later in the spring and they can find me some work. Will it be as nice as this job can be? Probably not. I have a company truck and a few pieces of equipment to operate and take care of, and a whole lot of freedom. I can use the equipment on my upcoming house build, for example. The other side of that is I won't have to work alone and beat myself up on and off the equipment, doing two guy's jobs at the same time. That is how I got hurt and the likelihood that it will happen again is tipping the scales. I called in a friend who is operating for them on the next few jobs. I don't have to make this call today or this year, for that matter. The company equipment thing might save me ~$6,000 in rental fees. That is small potatoes in the big picture. It was more about convenience than anything. I was shooting for late 2023 in my latest set of plans. It will mean ~$340 a month less, and whatever money we save in that period if I bail in January 2023. I had to get that off my chest. Thanks for stopping by.
You have a ton of options plus the advantage of time. The only hard thing you have to do is make the decision on which path you want to take. Hanging out here is a good time waster anyway. Good luck to you what ever you decide.
Taking some time off sounds like a good thing for you right now. You can always go back to work after you get the carpal tunnel resolved, if you feel you need to. And we're always here to listen when needed.
Between a round of Wuhan Flu, the damnable vaccine had to take due to license class and age I am having some serious rounds of issues with Psoriatic Arthritis these days. Hands are really angry with all the joint inflammation where get hard to handle tooling, neck started acting stupid tries to lock at spots and at odd times where have a appointment at ortho shop that installed last two discs, knew needed at least one more in Cervical section of spine at C4/5 but insurance would not allow at the time five years ago. Arthritis may be too far along to get that currently. Knees are angry, right hip is REALLIY Pizzed off and anti-inflammatory meds are about useless. Again, appt. at Ortho will determine much of where I go from here. At least managed to get the KW Done with all this going on.
A fountain of youth would sure be nice.
I figured out what I can do is get this hand figured out, and then retire. I can work up to 50 hours a month without kicking myself out of my retirement. They have very little work right now ahead of them and I can probably cover it with the 50 hours. That way I get to collect my pension and a little bit of money and add to my pension and add to my medical bank.
Sorry about the health issues skyking1.
Sorry to hear about the health problems Skyking1. Retiring before your ready can be tough, I watched my Dad do it three times. I personally pulled the pin in May at 60. We can more than live off my pension and there is enough money in the R M I account we won't have to pay for insurance until our mid 80's. What good health you and your Wife have left means more than anything. That being said I couldn't stomach leaving any of my pension money on the table, but we're both in good health. We travel for 6 to 8 weeks at a time and come back for 4 to 6 weeks at a time. It's a good laid back life that didn't take long to get used to.
I ran the numbers. It is going to be really messy with me building a new home from scratch. Lots of moving parts in the next year. The numbers are really messy, but I took our current spend and will need to supplement the pension and an annuity that will pay out until I am 70, with a little from savings. My wife can take SS in 4 years. We'd be plus at that point. I will hold off till 70 for the maximum. She won't retire until I get the home done to occupancy.
Skyking: Take the time to get your carpel tunnel feeling better before deciding to retire. Collect whatever benefits you can while getting better then return to work on a graduated program if you can. Possibly a helper to help with the banjo work (shovels were called banjos by the old timers here) may help you make another 6 months or a year of pensionable service. I don’t know your individual circumstances but in mine, a few months made quite a difference in the bottom line once I retired. Cam
The banjo is off the table now. I won't dig grade without help anymore. If they insist I will hand them the keys at that moment and I do believe they understand that. It's just stupid and shortsighted to not give me a grade guy. We don't have to dig very long to get a bunch of trench done that way. The other way just sucks.
You might check into disability payments if you can’t work any longer because is a repetitive motion problem.
Speaking of tight quarters, the current job is in Foss Waterway Seaport, a local maritime museum. https://www.fosswaterwayseaport.org/ Pretty cool place for a boat guy to hang around.
We are digging a bathroom group in the working museum. That's a fin whale skull, the second largest species of whale. My 35 wasn't going to cut it so I rented a 17. They had requested a hand dig. Um, no thanks.
The slab grades are so wonky in here. It's a 75-year-old warehouse, by the time they regraded they generated at least three yards of extra sand. I had to get it out of here. I chose to use my personal truck rather than the company one ton with the 12 ft bed and dual wheels. I backed all the way in the museum, please be careful and don't hit any artifacts okay? Notice the trailer tracks outside of my truck tracks in this picture. Tight quarters indeed.
I got the bigger dump trailer and I needed it. I'd rather not make two trips backing through this place. We found this lovely little surprise. A one foot thick grade beam 5 ft wide.
Would know that Dodge anywhere!!! Would not want that work FOR NUTHIN!!!!
He diced it up into manageable pieces and then I put dirt back in the hole and tracked it right out the door very carefully. Once it gets a core drilled I will back my way out of there, finishing the trench. It's a one-way trip.
Nice work! That's going to be one expensive bathroom.
Is that a hyd. concrete saw with water cooling in the 1st pic ? It's an optical illusion that the bucket and/or the thumb are twisted.
Yep that's a hydraulic concrete hand saw - brutal piece of equipment to operate. The water is to cool the blade and an added bonus of keeping the dust down.
Its a half dozen each plus a family bathroom. That's not the half of it they need to bring in more water. Lots of creep on this project
Like the book for kids says, Everybody poops.
Always creep in commercial work Too much hidden stuff
Remodeling...We make good money on commercial remodel jobs.
here is how I left it late yesterday afternoon, ready for piping. There is a barn door with a low overhead over the ditch, I had to narrow up and go around that dangling post on the left to get through there. This was a seriously one-way trip. Tracks out Tracks in. Not so much fun, none too stable.
Welcome to my world. Lots of goo. I have to backfill with that junk under the plastic and it's not much sweeter. Grease line next to sanitary. Thankfully we could run it at the same grade and elevation. The prints had the sanitary @1% and the grease line @2%. That makes for a long day.
I started backfilling that and the Gen Sup thought I was going to leave it ready for the electrician to lay conduit. "I'm not fixing your whole muddy site for you, get the dirt guy down here" He did and I graciously stayed on and helped scrape the whole thing down. I rarely get to dance the excavator dance with some good guys, and lately it has always been this crew. They brought in a 50 and the volvo 160 loaded it into a truck to take it away. He put the bucket on backwards and I tucked the last bit in there. Here you go sparky.
Today was a little government job. This retaining wall was falling over. It was poured with the garage walls and portal, so we got the saw cutter out there with his hand held and chainsaw. Note the lovely guy wire, power pole, and street signage. I laid down plywood to protect the equally old sidewalk.
That was a full load of concrete, and I was able to dump it for free fairly close by. I loaded out a heaping load of dirt to prepare for the wall guys to follow.
This is an example of no coordination. Typically we get in there, dig in the plumbing, get an inspection, backfill and turn it over to the electrician and ultimately the site's dirt contractor for cap break before pour. This time they had the electrician scheduled right on top of us. I went away yesterday and came back to this stupidity. I held my tongue for a while, but ultimately it came out. After speaking with the GC and electrician, I think we have a solution. The dirt crew will come help out with jumping jack and plate, so we can get compaction under the conduit. Sparky will lend a guy too. It beats cutting it all out of the way so I can hoe pack it.
Site coordination has always been an issue on a job site. It comes from the site leadership and it can go wrong very easily. I have been on jobs where everything worked well and the others……Cam
In all honesty, that mess above was caused by a ridiculous schedule. The general contractor had us on top of each other on the calendar. Yesterday the dirt guys sent out a young man to help me and a jumping jack and we knocked the heck out of it. This morning I just had a little piece to finish. They had walled me in with a stem wall pour, and there was a pile of dirt outside I could use to ramp myself out. I got everything cleaned up and then the concrete pump truck showed up, and that was the end of getting out today! First picture is another example of why we don't want a 50. I had to go hide in the corner because they're pouring a couple of different spots in there.
Thank you for taking us along on your work adventures, I really enjoy your posts. The company you work for is going to have an impossible time replacing you when you leave. You are Awesome at your trade.
Curious question Sky - You backfill your trenches with dirt/clay or whatever onsite material their is? Plumbers and sparky's always backfill with stone here and we usually get the CO to haul the spoils off along with footing and other trench spoils.
Cheap basstiges will fill with the native if they can get away with it. That was "OK" material that went into the ditch and I vibed it as much as I dared. It was pumping but that was a Friday and by Monday it was OK underfoot. "if it is good enough to build on it is good enough to go back" Seems to be the mantra of the almighty dollar around here. I won't miss that on crappy sites when I am done!
10-4 The sites we are on eat #57's by the truckload like popcorn at the movies. I always get a chuckle on a cut site when the GC says "Where did all this dirt come from" meaning the other trades spoils. Usually laugh and say "For every load of #57's coming in a load of dirt has got to leave, it's a cut site."
That job above is 100% import about 4' deep, sand and a few stones in it. Very nice stuff no pipe bedding needed.
Yeah I saw that, good looking sandy material. Looks similar to our 8910 crushed stone.
Western Washington has a whole lot of glacial deposits that we can proctor and use. That stuff was dug up and maybe minimally screened for big nuggets. We don't have any of those product numbers like #57. I see CSTC ( crushed surfacing top course) 5/8" minus CSBC ( Crushed surfacing base course) 1.25" minus Those show up on highway and road job specs.
It's just the size screen the rock passes thru. Smaller the number the larger the rock. #57's are screen size 5 thru 7 so basically it's a 3/4 sized rock. 8910 is 3/8" down to dust.
we'd call 57 3/4 clean. We just don't use that language here
Kid needs a half chewed cigar, a CAT hat, and a work shirt with his nick name on it.
The first surgery is in the books today and I'm chilling out. I'm going to haul the excavator to a job on Friday and have another guy operate it. I can hang out with them and show them how to use the laser Etc. I preloaded and chained it down the other day, fueled it. The job site is a bit sketchy so we will load and bring it home that night. I staged the dump truck there yesterday with 7 tons of pea gravel in it. I'm not concerned about it in the least at the sketchy site. The other operator is a fellow union operator and we met on my 2nd job out of the hall in 1991. We have kept in touch and worked on some other projects over the years.
no drivy drivy today. Tramadol makes me sleeeepy, damitol.
First it's Tramadol, then Toradol, then Morphine then Hydromorphone about 8 times stronger than Morphine. Sleep is better than pain though. BTDT and still on the hydro.
I get one more and then I have to drive tomorrow so it is nsaids after that.
I'm sitting on the job site in the truck. I have to just walk away so I don't put my hand on a shovel or something stupid like that. It's going okay but I can tell I could sure screw up easily. It's nice to have a friend on the job who knows what he's doing to take care of my work. I'm not even going to try driving the dump truck on the site. That's a surefire way to mess up a hand.
This is very difficult watching Larry, Moe and Curly work. I'm not talking about my operator friend either!
What operation did you have?
One of two carpal tunnel release surgeries. Larry Moe Curly have done it to me again. We're wrapping up and getting ready to load up the machine and they realized that there are a bunch of branch lines that they didn't paint on the ground that now they want dug out. This is at 2:30 in the afternoon. I realize that this guy doesn't have very much experience as a plumber, but I want to throttle him. This is also bad for my hand.
Second surgery is done today. The first hand feels absolutely fantastic. The only thing I can do to make it hurt is get down on the ground and put my palm down trying to get back up.
Great news Sky! Hope the recovery time is quick.
On the last surgery I went to work the next day to move equipment around. This time I'm just going to lay low until Monday. There is a Greek festival up in Seattle on Saturday that I'm going to. I figure I'll have enough strength to lift a fork.
I had a tendon sheath repair on my middle finger tendon in the middle of my palm. The needle for freezing was so long…… It took most of a month to heal and the first week of light duty just about killed me. I could hardly open a door with my right hand. Glad your surgery’s went well and you are back to work quickly. Cam
work is slow, I have been cutting blackberries and pulling weeds as much as my hand can stand. Yesterday I went out to Pete's to dump out this good gravelly stuff we had at the shop and track it into a low spot that my trailer was sitting over when I took out those stumps earlier. They had ground and paved nearby Highway 7, and the pile of grindings was only 4 miles away. I contacted the owner and picked up 3 loads of grindings at $100 a load. One went on the loop road and the other two I dumped in the trailer parking area to spread out and track in.
Don't they rent goats out that way?
I don't really have any commercial work so I'll just post whatever I'm doing in here. Today. I'm doing a little government job for one of the plumber's brothers. He's got an acre and a quarter with a little beard of trees at the top edge. Maybe 20 feet deep. I'm going to clear all that out and harvest a bunch of boulders in there to build wall with. There's no good turnaround room so I just drove straight in up the hill until I figured I was going to start spinning with the interlocks in and stopped. It's a lot easier to turn this thing around unloaded. Just for grins, I put the tape measure to it. The trailer is 31 ft to the end of the pintle, and overall I'm just an inch under 55 ft.
Alrighty. More like 45 ft of brush and trees and blackberries. Right now it looks like a bomb went off. No pictures of that!
Sounds like fun, can relate to NOT dookying around with repaired parts. Still have so much to do and it bugs me so I walk away from the windows and chew on my lip.
I’ll be doing a boulder wall myself, I’m interested in seeing yours as you build it.
You can see it there in the picture that somebody already started it. I'm just going to take it up a little bit with some dirt that's there and the rocks that I'm harvesting.
Me too. I have a fairly decent collection of rocks hauled in to our dump from jobs over the years that I am planning on using to build some walls on our new house. Nice orange/pinkish sandstone chunks 2-3 wide, 5-6 long and 1-2' thick.
these are glacial nuggets and mostly roundish, so no real fun to be had. I back them up and then have to step back a good amount for each course, since there are few corners to lock things together. You have to step back more than 50%.
Some of the rock stockpiled from a job back in 2015. It'll make a nice retaining wall.
those are some sweet stones! I wish I had some slabs like that. I have a handful that followed me home from a mountain job that I have scattered around, some up on block to make tables. The job used clean choir logs for erosion control, they were nice for cushioning the rocks for the 60 mile ride home. I liked them enough that I rented that little hoe to unload them.
All I can suggest is let your surgeries fully heal or you could regret it. Know a couple people that had shoulder and other surgeries and didn't let them heal properly. They said the surgeries weren't successful instead of putting any blame on themselves. It sucks not being able to do what you want but you will be able to in a few month's if you let yourself heal. If you don't you'll probably never recover and always have a bit of a handicap. I'm in a position I just don't have the strength or energy following cancer treatments even though the cancer is in full remission and my levels are all good. I'm hoping I get better over time but it's very frustrating. Just today I needed help pull starting a 6 HP engine.
Sorry to hear that Dave, but I am fully recovered and my L & I claim is closed. I'm good to go.
Good deal on your recovery time, did not take as long as expected. Hoping my own repairs do as well.
I robbed dirt and a bunch more rocks from the slope above the wall, to make a bench he can mow. The slope was about 3 to 1. The rocks I found when I was clearing will get used to put a rockery where I robbed the dirt. I'll blend that all together so he can run a riding mower over that. The rules were I could not move any of the toe rocks or work from below where she had planted a few trees. There was a bunch of doubled up rock so I robbed those from behind the toe course, then filled in with dirt. I will build that upper rockery and blend it all out tomorrow. Nothing but clay and round taters of various sizes.
I got it backfilled and built with the existing doubled up rock, so I could use the stones I harvested to start an upper rockery where I robbed the fill. Too bad it was not enough. I set a bottom course so when the bank slumps it is captured more or less.
I always hated building rock walls. I always had to use round rocks like that because they're cheaper. Pear shaped is the worst. They just won't do what you want them to do.
We had 3 excavators, a backhoe and two dump trucks dancing around a city lot the last two days. Our goal was to get the 6" main trunk in before they filled the low side of the lot up. The utilities crew was in there at the same time, getting the storm lines down each side. They had set two manholes at the high end of the lot in the alley. This means those trenches are 100% CDF as they are about under the footings. The building is 5 stories and I don't know how many units. We will come back and dig all the branches out after they fill in the site and get footings poured. How about a few stacks? That is down a central hallway on the ground floor slab on grade. This Pit Bassett lives in the hood. At first glance I thought, "man that is a tough looking corgi"
@CM1995 this is a 100% unsuitable job and our trench will get filled by import, but that is on the general. I have offered to place and compact it. I had one good pile of material that would go back IMO, but a whole lot of dirt laced with demo debris. At least I got down to decent native for the bottom of the trench. The grade came up fast enough that we had to toss in a couple of 45's and jump the pipe up 18" to stay above shoring depth.
What a Mess
That's not a mess. This is a mess. In all fairness, the logger probably did what was asked, to clean it all up neatly and put it in a berm. I was the fool who came behind a year later and sorted all the burnables out of the dirt and roots and decomposed needles. It has a very high dirt content.
The berm-O-Crapola stretched from that stump on the left around to way over yonder. I have grubbed out all the stuff that I can without any hand jobbing. Tomorrow I will put on the 4' clean up bucket and RE-berm it. It will be greatly reduced in stature, and shaped so they can plant trees and whatnot on top of it. What was there was a really nasty death hazard of trees and huge limbs. Climbing up on it would be perilous, with all sorts of trips and deep holes, and at least one hornet's nest. There is the worst of it, to the right of the fire. It was no bueno. There is most of it, with the stump pile that we were not able to burn. I hid that behind some cedars.
That cleaned up nice, Skyking1. I’ll show you what’s not a mess. My new 3 bed, deep trench, ADEC approved septic system. 1000 gallon Greer plastic tank. Did a T configuration with a 30’ drain field. It’s pretty sweet. I waited around two summers for you to mobe 1,500 miles. I kept listening for your 3406B to sing the Jake’s and slow down for the corner, but alas,…,
what am I looking at in the second picture? I see two ABS trees and several PVC trees growing out of your lot.
I’m filling the tank through the cabin inlet. Then, there is a pvc clean out, then an pvc pipe from tank chamber#1, a second pvc pipe from chamber #2, then a pair of drain field monitor pipes on each side of the drain field. There is a lone ABS pipe on the far right which is a branch going to my garage. I’ll post the drawing. It will make more sense.
It was that second connection for two bedrooms that threw me off the bucking moose of the north.
My little government job got cut short, they wanted me to mobe in to a deep dig that is coming up. They write the paychecks so I did what I could. I had tossed the bermy crapola to the center circle after gleaning on it a bit, but I had a big mess in there so I scraped it all up, along with the first fire pile of ash, and built one of the finish product berms. I got the last of the burnables on the fire, but that was about it. The neighbor has a logging outfit and shop, and this little berm will get planted with some royal fir seedlings that volunteered in the yard to make a privacy screen. If/when I get back I will continue with that. It looks mostly like dirt now after fingering it for a few days.
I'm moved back into the second building of that little forest of stacks job. The first thing I noticed it was pretty bad access. I ended up dumping my pea gravel in the footing, and jumping over that into the job. It's a really weird building with a 16-in thick slab and still a foot of base to go in there. Much of our pipe was going to be in the air, or so we thought. Somebody really didn't look at the print very well and there is a floor drain in a lower area, down by the alley that's going to have me in shoring all the way through the building. Now the powers that be are hashing through all that stuff that they should have done beforehand. I walked up to MLK way to get some lunch while they were getting answers and stopped by a job that I dug for them 10 years ago. I posted pictures earlier about this fuel tank, it was for this massive generator.
That’s a lot of juice. What is that facility?
I’m trying to pioneer a road through the Alaskan Wilderness. Everyone is too busy trying to wrap up the season before winter sets in. I got this little Cat 306B. What a sweetheart of a machine. Trying to mine some gravel. Can’t figure out the technique. I did a trench and stockpiled top soil on one side and gravel on the other. Meh…. Then, I tried digging a big hole and putting top soil on one side and gravel on the other. Dug my self into a corner and can’t reach the top soil to bury it. Any tips? I was going to haul some rock, but road construction on the Hwy is adding a huge expense in wait time. Everyone is busy. My ten wheeler is broken and the judge hasn’t given me my rig license back.
It's a community health care facility with a parking garage next door. I have no idea why they justified that much generator.
So I understand you don't have the license but can you fix the rig and get it on site? That would really help. You could strip a bunch heap up a bunch of gravel and toss it in the truck and make a stockpile. Then you could throw the strippings back in the hole and repeat. When your license got sorted out you could hope that the highway construction was done and you could move material efficiently.
That’s a good idea. I’m muddling through it. Went back to the trench technique. My hoe skills are coming back. Got the stump pile burning.
I was going to scratch the main line in on that right paint mark with about 4" of cover at the shallow end, until I got to looking at the print. There is a pesky little floor drain WAY down there that we supposedly have to pick up. That is a 5 foot bust-ola.
That's not gonna be fun
Did you go to Pho King? The best part is if anyone asks how lunch was... "Pho King awesome" Le Donut is good too. Bacon maple bars were my favorite
Red Elm Cafe Bacon cheddar waffle
Here we go. Got it somewhat packed down. Gave it a 2% out-slope. Maybe by accident. This machine has a x/Y slope indicator on the dash. Kind cool. The material looks excessively sandy, but all the local roads are made with it. Holds up well. I feel like finding a compactor to hammer it down, or wait to spring. Everyday is borrowed time. Winter is hours away.
nothing compacts it like a winter season. Those slope indicators are one of the nice features on the Cat minis. My suggestion is tune it up like that and get it all shaped up as you wish, then plan on regrading it in the late spring again. With material like that,depth is your friend, and you start to eyeball where will all that melt go? and plan accordingly.
I've been working on that little tight building site for the last few days. It started out with me having to dump my bedding into a footing dig to run across the top of it into the job. They finally figured out what to do with that deep floor drain, they deleted it! The job is 100% unsuitable soils so I told him the best place for me to make the mountain was down in that low area I started it on the job and only 17 in down from subgrade and I still made that mountain. I scratch the connection in just a foot under the footing dit and then 45 up the slope Unfortunately that storm pipe in the corner is going to have to get done under my pipe which is always backwards but, common. I had to get all my pea gravel out of that footing so they could dig storm pipe through there on Monday.
I used my steel sheet a lot on this one. Put a couple 2x4s on it so that I would pass over the string line without snipping it. By the end of the day I had redistributed all that pea gravel next to the trenches where they hadn't plumbed yet. Lots of 2x4 over the string line trick. I had dug and graded all that to 1% and 2% as needed. This is that oddball job with a 28 inch section left to go as you see it. 12 inches of structural fill and a 16-in slab!
I thought I had a cold Friday, but it was oh so much more. My wife and I have the latest strain of Covid. Fever and chills and sore throat and repeat. We are both on the antivirals now and taking it easy.
That sucks. Wife and I got it when we went to the Auburn Cal game back in early September. Both times we've been to the west coast in the last couple of years one or both of us have come back with covid. It wasn't that bad for us. Wife had it worse with fever and chills as the cough lingered for a month or so. I had stuffed sinuses and general fatigue but was over it in a week. Get well!
I had it last week too, knocked me on my ass for a couple days. Joint/muscle aches and a fever. No fun! Get well soon!
I have kicked the fever but Darling Wife (DW) is still running variable temps and body aches and pains.
Wife had a come and go fever for 4.5 days.
How are you doing, @skyking1 ?
Pretty good overall. The fever has been long gone and I can breathe OK. I checked on that first trunk job at this project. They dug out big footing digs and an elevator pit right next to and over the main trunk. All I can say is I am glad this is not our design. What a mess.
I had backfilled the other site Friday and moved the mini out, then got a load of trench boxes and steel sheets for that deep job that is starting tomorrow. I'm loaded up and plugged in for the night. The truck is a bit hard to start and I think It needs new batteries. That first cold snap will expose weak stuff. It is supposed to just pour starting Wednesday night into Thursday. I hope to have half of the deep stuff under test at the end of Wednesday. I ordered a 2" electric trash pump from the rental outfit. The office tried to get me to use a Honda trash pump and that is a non-starter. The electric runs all night and you have a dry trench the next morning. The honda you have to shut down and secure, and you show up to an hour of pumping and a silty muddy mess in the morning. No thanks. We can handle $90 in rental pump and hose.
I got the first two boxes in and the silty sand is just running in from under the boxes. When I took some shots the grade is all too high ( again ). I'll hook some more out and get pea gravel in there tomorrow and set that first stick and cleanout, but there is no stopping this infiltration. I'll dig my way out of this mess in the next 40' or so. It is caving in fast. We'd dig dig dig and set the box, and the whole bank would calve off. I'll have to fill and pull these boxes up in stages when we get an inspection.
Just in case you're not sure, thumbs really suck in trench boxes.
We spent the morning patching soft spots, and then I hammered some stuff in and set the last box. The plumbers got the pipe in and I put big piles of pea gravel on it, and they filled the pipe for test. The cellular core DWV pipe will float even when full of water, so the ticket is to leave the gravel in piles when you go away overnight. The plumbers want to rake it all out nice and just showing the top of the pipe for inspection, which does nothing for you if the power goes out and the trench fills up. We can do that tomorrow right before the inspector shows up. We have 2 electric pumps running. I was hoping to be above the water table by now, and it is close. I may get it with the first set on Monday. On another note, I found this big fresh check on my right steer tire. First stop in the morning is the tire shop for new steers. I am so pumped. I had no idea the age of these steers and now I don't have to figure that out.
Looks like that is getting ready to unzip on a hot day pulling a heavy load at high speed always a bad day
As you can see it is fresh black it just popped. It won't get a chance to cause any more trouble.
Yep. Coincidentally, I just replaced my steer tires today. Also they were exactly the same as yours, the Ironman 301. I Put some Michelin take offs that I found on Craigslist on the truck. Everyone likes new rubber.
They are putting Ironman back. I crawled in and found the date code 0417. They almost made 7 years.
Yes they do. One of the reasons why we run manual thumbs. In 10 mins it can be removed from the machine.
We got an inspection and I started raising up the boxes and filling as we went. I don't want that black stuff to shear off onto the trench line. If I have to dig some of it out I'd rather it was on each side. I cut a 10" pipe for a well point to dewater the trench, and put it at the end outside the building. The utilities crew can use it when they connect the sewer too. The 2" pump is running about 2 garden hoses worth of water constantly. It looks like we will crawl up to where the water is below the pipe invert on Monday.
new steers are the bomb!! I know how they are on the car, but I did not expect it with the truck. I had them balanced and that was worth it IMO. $1270 well spent of the bosses money
I lost a set of drives this summer while hauling silage. I wish I would have checked the date code, but I never thought about it. We have had the truck for 6 years, and had never touched the tires. Local tire guy swapped them off on side of the road for us. Next morning, I met him at his shop and got the other 6 put on. It was really nice when we chopped corn and I wasn't the one slipping and spinning while chopping corn in the field.
same angle after we pulled 4 of the boxes out and set them up ready to go back in. I slid the middle box 4' to get things spaced out right. I pulled and filled the boxes in stages, so the sides would not cave in. This is necessary also to protect those vertical stacks. The bank can shear off and then snap the pipe at the bottom. That is a bad day! I was hoping to dig our way above the water eventually. It never did happen. I have one more box to set in the morning. The sides are falling in pretty quickly, I won the race today though.
3/4" of rain overnight revealed the reason for the trench cave in that we barely averted. Oh look, locate tape! It is the classic old trenchline next to your deeper trench. It is sneaky, they will hang on while you prepare to set the box and then a whole bunch will calve off at once with no cracking or warning. I hope some aspiring utilities operators and pipelayers pay attention to pictures like these. The solution was to unload the top of that trench, an abandoned 2" electrical conduit in this case. The ground is so bad that when it did fail before, it sheared all the way to the bottom of my trench, 4' below that conduit. The initiating force was that top 3' or so. You can see the joint between boxes. I cut that load away as far as I could, flush with the end of the box. There was a raft of junk at the outside where I popped out of the building that required some rearranging. I exited out and to the right past that silt fence when I was done.
here is the last time I had ground open. We trenched next to the mid building footings, and I had to bench for safety on one side and for the electricians on the other. That worked out OK. I have backfilled my pipe at this point, and heeled all the piles for weather. it looks like I care that way. Waiting on an electrical inspection. Usually I have excess soil when I get done, but I burned a bunch filling around those footings. It worked out OK. The electrical inspector had not bought off on this equipment room and the fire guys had to dig in the sprinkler supply. They can take care of that from the outside. They did the dirt guys a disservice with the forms. I would have them leave a couple of windows in there, but they had to bring the cap break in the whole length of the building. Crappy planning IMO.
Remember this job? It's been more than two months and we are finally getting the call to come back and dig in the branches. They want it done asap but won't be ready until Friday.
I made that temporary loading dock at the office for a tenant, a glass shop. It was for bringing in cans of glass and blinds from China. They do the darndest things loading the glass in the can. They must have some pretty nifty power tools over there. This time it was loaded with long glass, longer then the can is wide. It was wedged in there tight and screwed down in ~4000 pound units. The glass guys did OK for a while, then the lost an entire case, it went over on its side and was a total loss. 4000 pounds of broken glass to hand load and shovel up and tip into the dumpster. You can see some of it on the ground there. The crates are inadequate to begin with, and they managed to stack two of them in the can. The guys were brainstorming how to get that out and I told them to ask my boss if I can help. I wanted it to be a decision between the principals. My boss said to help any way I can, and I laid out a plan. They scabbed the two crates together with lumber and screws, and then I drug the whole thing out with the excavator. It did not help that it was ~4' inside and I had do drag it at an angle to start with. Once I could get over it we re-rigged it tight and ran a girdle strap back to the corner. It had my tracks off the ground a few times. Check out the list on the can. That is what 8000 pounds only 10" wide will do for you. I had them put a sturdy jack leg on the back out of our way. That would squash you just the same as an 8x20 road plate, only heavier.
I went back to the big apartment job to write up the confined entry permit and give a hand with the pumps, about 2 years after we set the structures. We used the tower crane to set everything but that little oil/sand separator. That was a box-full and fun to get the box off it without moving it, so I had the guys fill it with water and I worked it up for a while before hooking the tower crane to it. Things were going great and the atmosphere was testing good, until they started pressure washing the parking floor above. As we all know, small engines have no emissions controls and put out more CO than a handful of clean running cars. Yeah Yeah, sure. Today I got the demonstration. This little Honda got that whole half a city block garage level above habitable levels, with huge fans exhausting the whole time. We started the morning with ZERO CO on the meter, and suddenly it is over 25 and the alarm is squawking. I take a little walkabout and it is all bad, all over. It is in the 25~35 PPM level, which is one hour max exposure. We get the crew above to cease with the pressure washing until we get done. In about 5 minutes the big garage fans clear it down below the alarm, and when I left it was back to zero again.
Then things got a little funky. We started doing some BDSM with a goddess. One of the guys at the office has a fountain to move. We have moved it before with a crew of strong backs. This time we used diesel. We slung it up with the mini into the back of a truck, then I backed in at the destination and stayed on the trailer to unload it. Here she is, all trussed up in some nylon straps. I went back to check on the pump installation and they were done and gone. While I was down there the fire alarm in the garage started going off. CO again and even higher levels to trigger that. I got out and found they had a second pressure washer going now. :facepalm:
And I bet the pressure washers just kept going……. I’ve worked in chambers under the slow lane with heavy traffic going past in the other 3 lanes and never had the gas detector go off. Cam
We were setting 8x10 box culverts in an existing line with 2 gas powered trash pumps running bypass above. Even out in the open the exhaust would set the meter off inside the culvert. The pumps were a good 15-20' away on the surface in front of the trench box.
Every winter we hear about people expiring in their house, running a generator too close or in an open garage. It is good to have these discussions and see just how bad it can be. @Camshawn I just left. There is no talking sense to the go-getters. If you propose an electric pressure washer those are "not powerful enough" Not on a regular 15 amp circuit they are not, but every one of these commercial jobs has spider boxes. Those are 50A @240V that would run a heck of an electric pressure washer.
CO2 settles to low spots, modern autos convert much of the CO2 to something else but they do also displace O2 with exhaust, newer detection equipment we had at the nuke watched that as well. Normal O2 is around 20.8%, below 20% our detectors indicating depleting Level, at 19.7% Hard Alarm for TOO Low. May not kill you but will place into a unconscious state at around 19%. Many discount SO2, that from deposits of organics stirred up when moving wet organic laden soils or waste deposits human or otherwise. Had two vaults had to vent for close to a day and then could NOT step into the water in pit bottoms or pump it out as the trash there released SO2. Ended up having those replaced. Small engines are NOT efficient enough not to discharge CO2 at high levels, I too agree to the Spider Box swap to Electric Motor Driven in bad locations
My 4 gas meter detects SO2 as well as explosive gasses, low O2 alarm is set at 19.5%, high CO is 25.
I mobilized yesterday, and it was clear that they were not likely to be ready on Friday. We went down and observed some of the worst jobsite coordination around. This GC has a master's degree in conducting a poop movie. I had to hop over 2'+ tall stemwalls and preserve all these deep thickened footings. I could use 3 of my custom steel plates here. Look inviting? When I got there he was about to give away that drain rock and i said I could really use that to hop in over. I dropped down over that stem wall and then thumbed the sheet in place up against the tracks, before I punched that footing dig in. It was too close to use the rigging and I had to do it on the slant. That's my best ground guy and I was lucky to have him on the job today. Coming back out now after digging that area. We were able to dig and prep about the top 1/3rd of the job, as they were still backfilling and then chopping up the rest. They were not done when we left, and the site was supposed to be ours today. The other three excavators told a different story I hopped that grid line wall in two spots, without dirt ramps. It is hard on tracks and operators both. I brought out all the unsuitable clay with me, it is under the plastic. We are cleaning as we go so they can just telelbelt the cap break after.
There are days I look at your jobs and think "I really miss the the challenge." Then you post a turd job like that and I think "that super's parents paid good money for a construction management degree." At least you had good help, it's a long day when you're doing all their thinking too.
@dust eater I'm just trying to hang on 1 more year, and days like that make it difficult. Nobody rents light sheets like mine. I will ask around on my day off Tuesday. Everybody rents road rated, and the lightest ones I see are 5x8 and weigh 1600 . That is just not practical with the 35, but I know I have several footings like that one in the last picture over by the house. Some are side by side with a 6' lump of dirt between, and if I cave all that in to run across I'll have to restore it too. It is so much faster to plate it and just go like I did above.
Maybe I'll get another 1 or 2 cut. I think it was $700 each.
I would have left and told them to call me when it's actually ready.
I had 3 other guys standing there to think about, so that was not an option. The two plumbers got some done in that middle hallway while we dug out those few trenches, and now we are ahead of them come Wednesday. They can lay out and we can get stroking on it. I think I will go down tomorrow early and talk to the GC about opening the fence and bringing my truck up against the footing in a different spot. Where the ramp is, I jump right in on a maze of those deep thickened footing digs. This is not the place to drag the pea gravel into the job I may just fill a bunch of them in and compact, then re-dig them on the way out after backfill.
Nobody will rent anything but 1" road plates. I may look it over and get a couple of 5x8's and shoot them in with the 10K forklift they have there. I can't have their operator do it, as he would not put down an outrigger when setting a heavy electrical vault. I'll bring my card and see if that is an option.
Good choice
The more I looked at it, it was never a thing. I preserved what was possible and tore the living crap out of the rest This is what it looked like. But there is a problem, really 5 problems. When we trunked in there, they had a bunch of fill to import and I had to leave some pipes down for the truck show. They are now way down. Boom! there are 3 of them, about 3' down in all that nice little checkerboard footie footie digs. I dropped the hammer on that and will have to restore it. I skinnied through that porch area beyond me by running a track down the stemwall. This business is hard on tracks. I bet they are toasted by 1500 hours.
You get 1500 hrs on tracks I am happy with a 1000
There are two more we dug up there, and the plumber had brought out a pump line from that elevator pit. Tomorrow I will dig a couple short runs, and then a long one through that pile in the second picture and under my 18" bucket all the way to the corners. When I am done I'll be banished to the porch there. @AzIron the machine is just under 1000 hours. I think the OEM tracks last the longest. These still look reasonable.
this is better scale to how deep those stubs were, and how those pretty footing digs were a waste of time. I backed the truck up to get bedding in there, and we filled that porch up with spoils so yeah, kinda landlocked now.' Somebody put Baby in the corner.
Why is it that most Contractors of differed trades all try to oitrun each other while screwing each other’s work up? Saw this at so many varied locations, jobs as mechanic or tech. Seems nothing ever changes. The Nuke was insane on this.
it is the way of the dirt. The dirt guy puts it right and then I get to restore it. This happens in buildings. In the field, hopefully the first and only rule applies. DSGIF (Deep Stuff Goes In First).
One plumber we worked with was a pain in my ass. We would rough stone the building so it wasn't a slop hole. He'd always put the old stone to one side and reuse it . Leaving his trenches 3 to 6 inches low. He would never give us any stone. So we started stoning right up to grade. It helped but never back to grade.
that never happens on our jobs. 1) I can't get the trenches back above about 95% so there is some swell. 2) Pipe volume. 3) pea gravel bedding import. I always have excess material I toss out, and the GC and my boss negotiate on that. If the dirt guy is still on the job he usually takes it. I toss it out for him. If the dirt guy is gone then I haul as many boxes away as I hauled pea gravel in.
This job is entered the Twilight zone. In the 9th inning in the bottom of the ninth inning, the engineer has decided they don't like the way the plumbing is running through the footings. The inspector wouldn't buy it off the way it was and asked for a note from the engineer. I came down here today prepared to rip out a whole bunch of already inspected plumbing to dig it lower. Now there's a bunch of back and forth going on between people of a higher pay grade and I'm standing by.
Yup, I like it in the woods...
Ugghh I hate those meetings. Finger pointing everywhere and the heaviest hitters (GC, owner, architect, engineer) want the lowly sub to eat their mistake.
I got the text that we will indeed be making a fine mess of things tomorrow.
Yes, carefully digging things up like this monstrosity, cutting it off, dig it down in truly garbage material with bricks and wood in it, repeat! Every pipe in that picture above got cut into or otherwise lowered or re-routed today and tomorrow. here is some of the house demo crap that got laid down in a layer. That is a genuine full 2x10 standing up there, solid and probably VG fir. No I did not bring it home.
Restoring thickened footings yesterday, using the steel plate everywhere on this job. Yes we have had rain day and night. Today I had a first. I was 3 legging it on one side of the blade and tipped to the boom while swinging the plate out of there. I had to push back upright. We had cleared out all that material and I tossed that goo out and crawled onto it, and it was not as sturdy as I imagined. We did all we could and mobilized out of there. Phew!
I went back to the neighborhood to mark for locate on another job and stopped by to see the telebelt operation. They were between trucks when I got there.
Today I helped the service crew with a leak. This pipe Was hiding under this hunk of sidewalk. I blade grabbed it like a steel sheet after I I got it out of the hole. We had the vac truck do the work, and he hauled off two loads out of that hole. The leak had saturated the soil there and digging it would have been a muddy mess.
I took a WAG at how much rock I needed. I had maybe a ton or so of pea gravel already. I guessed it about a half ton short! I told the service guys there's room for the landscaper now : This is $100,000 of copper looks like. Not this ring the little missing bit.
I got word about my other job that might start this week. They have almost completed the water compaction phase. That equipment is guarding the site to keep the rain from falling now, and the flatbed trucks with extra large paper towels are on the way. Seriously, the plumber went to the edge of the gravel and stabbed a lathe in a foot. We need to dig 8' below the FF of that adjacent building. Perhaps the plumbers will get dive certified. :facepalm:
What's the story on the copper?
That is the little slice of 1.25" copper pipe that has the leak in it. Sort of like that bad fuse on 3" HDPE that I posted a couple of years back. The water bill went nuts and neither the city or the person writing the checks did anything about it. The service guys discovered it when the fixed a frozen pipe in the building. You could HEAR it at the inside shutoff valve and then they looked at the meter going round and round. " hey, you have a big leak here"
I went to Pape and picked up some new twin tigers for the corners on the 2'. Apparently under all that goo above, there is a nasty hardpan layer that will be slow going. While there I spotted this monster Johnny. It is the only place I have seen one. Lots of Forestry Green in the yard there.
Last summer saw a Deere 1050 fitted out just like that one at Brandt tractor in Kamloops. We were picking up some teeth for the 210. Looked like a nice upgrade from our Euclid C-6; wife was with me told me in a stern tone to look the other way!
700k? More? Our wives are usually right!
Yes indeed!
I went by a job we dug before Thanksgiving, to assist with some camera work on an unrelated sewer stub. This: is now all gray The building is 250' x 124' They cut everything down and used a power screed, so all the pipes are just feathers out there. Hopefully this relief cut did not wreak too much havok with this stack. Note these big "staples" of steel in lieu of diagonal bracing. The building has a bunch of walk doors for demising the structure for tenants, with windows etc. They were putting in the last row of purlins.
The lake is gone! They exed out all sorts of dark soil and placed it on site out of the way, and have been trucking in bank run. We'll get started down there in a couple of weeks.
I mobed down there today and waited a while for sleeve pipe to get delivered. The site crew had exed out the pool area, and they had a couple of trench drains and sumps to dig in the bottom of it. We had pipe to put between those sumps and trench out, so what they were doing was going to be the holdup. They were hard way jonesing it down there with a 305.5 with a moldboard on the bucket, in that hard glacial till. :facepalm: I suggested that I rough it out with my new tiger teeth on the 120, and we traded places. He dug the sleeves in for the plumbers in the imported bank run. It got them done much quicker and out of our way. I'll be about 2' below the floor of the pond then we'll trench into that bank about 10' to get outside the footings. That puts the trench 7' down, and I am picking up an 8x12 aluminum box to get that done. The site is really saturated fill above that floor and would not stand up, nor do I want to blow it out wide and then try to get any compaction on it.
Getting it done.
When we put in the septic tank, it was scratch the surface with the digging bucket then switch to the cleanup bucket to flatten the bottom and corners, check level and depth, rinse and repeat. The cleanup bucket just skated across the surface. That till was hard. The little Kubota was at the end of both in depth and power. Cam
I stayed late to get it done. The import is soggy saturated stuff, and it snowed 6" and melted and then rained a few inches, so the site is full up on moisture. I covered a pile of the glacial till yesterday, and then I creamed the top off all the piles to get the trench solid. Per an agreement with the site guys, I moved all the excess out and tamped it, and ran the hoe pack on it. It is jelly tonight, but it might be decent in a week or two. I chose to stay late because it is going to rain an inch or two tomorrow. I'd much rather get it done in the better weather, and we kept it to a day's rent on the trench box. Isn't she lovely! Trench and the bank are solid now. Looks OK, don't walk on if for a few days.
The facility is a seafood harvesting processing facility. They harvest oysters in the bay, then put them in stacked crates and run ocean water through the stacks and clean out the oysters. Then they go to either fresh sales or to the shucking plant. This is phase one, which we plumbed 4 years ago.
I topped off the box to 11.5 tons then raised it about that much, and made it a stealth load. I had parked the iron over in the woods out of the way. Rather than pack the kit over there I planted them in the top of the load. Eeny meeny miney MO. I decided to side dig it with the cleanup. It is an awkward lower pipe with other pipes a foot above that one, 2' on center to each side.
That bottom pipe is 10" Sch 80 PVC, no joke. It will have 90 PSI working pressure with ocean water. I brought an array of chokers with me. We can put in the pipe closest to the machine, but that other one will have to wait until they pour and strip the pool wall and backfill a little.
that first one is hiding 3" below the pea gravel. Next pipe is Sch 40 10" PVC being used as DWV. I think I will heel in that slope of pipe with a foot of black crushed rock and give it a light massage with the hoe pack. It's awkward all right. there's 33 tons of pea gravel in that mess.
I put about 6" of this black 5/8" looks like grindings. A very ginger touch on the hoe pack, then I shot the inverts in the 3 T's to see how much it moved. Sitting in a 1:1 slope of pea gravel, I expected it to move a little. The middle T was 0, the near end was -0.15" and the far tee was -0.50" as referenced from a 1% slope. With a foot of fall over the 100' run I'm good with that. My guess is I lifted the middle a bit. That 8" has to wait for the form and pour and strip, that's looking like 2-3 weeks. I picked the perfect month to start my pension. It is so slow, I just left it all there, dump truck and all. I will need shoring for the next dig there. It is barely 5' deep but it is all soft import that will play heck keeping out of the bottom. I will see if I can rent a 4x15 steel box that I can drag along. The shortest side runs are 15' so that will be workable. No inspection needed so I will trunk in the main run and just bury combos in pea gravel, hammer it, then dig the side branches. It is a wierd setup with formed and poured CB's that capture trench drains, and the sides of the CB's are in tensioned pours so no traditional CB would work. The pipe pops in the bottom vertically.
I wanted 30" spreaders but settled for 36". It's a 4x16 and weighs 4600, which is doable with the 120. I have a single set of speed shoring and two jacks to do the cleanout outside of the footings.
We got the outside done without the shoring. The site guys have used a bunch of this black non-spec material and dolled it all up just for me to tear it to shreds. They screwed up and did not arrange for any help. The plumber is older than me and pretty stove up. He was done in by the end of the day. We get a couple of helpers tomorrow, which is good. Pointless to gear up without the help.
I got my box of rocks within reach. All good. This is the end of the line set. Then I got to come dig back at it from the sides. The only way to do it's the backfill and then dig it back up again.
Or so I had planned. I started looking at it and hey, I can reach the end of that trench if I straddle the box. I reached that, then went around and dug against the side of the box, and pulled a notch away from it on my side. then I got back beyond it and stabbed it out of there. Reset across the other ditch and Sam cleaned up the last little bit into the bucket.
We're doing the last couple while they're pouring out one of the pools there. Plumbers and their string lines.
SK that glacial material looks very similar to the river gravel in Costa Rica. Volcanic in nature, worn and rounded by tumbling down the river to the Pacific Ocean. Great material to work with. Probably hauled in 5-6K yards to fill in a development many years ago.
That's all import from somewhere up north. They exed out a bunch of unsuitable nice soils. Remember the lake? Water testing
We got the deep stuff in first per rule #1. This is the sanitary, and that trench is half in the deep trench. I dug it far enough for a 20', and then turned around and worked back to that. The plan was bury that 20' except for the couplings so the inspector can eyeball that. That was my escape path. I set the laser so it could shoot over the track, and then nosed right up to the forms to reach the orange marks and bring it under that hairpin and the 8 pack of rebar for the tension tie across the building.
I have been buying pea gravel for this job and getting reimbursed for it from the closest pit, Miles Sand and Gravel in Shelton. It has a phone to the office for remote scale operations.They are a big outfit around here, and I think their name should have something to do with the miles of conveyors they use! Driving out along the bank run coming to the plant. add a conveyor and a bend. That's State Route 101 overhead. on the other side it goes like the energizer bunny. Then it turns up into the mine site.
You can find their sites all over, some with tunnels under the road for the conveyors as they expand outward from the plant. They don't move the plant to the rock, they move the rock to the plant. They sell a lot of concrete and go through a bunch of sand. They have a fleet of double belly dumps to haul it to the plants, and they get it at the sand pit near Roy. This is the only sand dredge setup I have seen in fresh water. It has one of those conveyor through the pipe runs that would be a bugger to work on.
They did not make it easy. We added a few inches of crushed and compacted it against the newly poured pool wall. We buried the pipe in several tons of pea gravel and capped it with some more crushed to give it a foot of cover. The site guys can take it from there. I used some gentle swing persuasion to pull the pipe into the long bell joint. The site guys need access to start backfilling Monday, so I buried that stick and left the joints exposed for the inspector. That usually works OK.
working on 16 @Truck Shop bays or so of new building @ Frightliner. 250' of trench drains and 450' of pipe to hook them up. It's all in and spring lined ++ and waiting for inspection Friday.
Went there a few times to buy oil. they were busy back then, nice to see them expanding. Bought my trailer from pro truck on the other side of 167, if you're looking for a project they've got plenty
We got the last big pipe in today, and the GC asked us to backfill that area all the way up to a level for the electricians to keep going. We did that T & M. Always a fun time dodging carpenters without a clue. One guy was working on top of that poured wall where the back of my bucket had to go to dump material. That bump out had me long tossing and one time, he jumped back like I was going to swat him. How about stay the @##$ out of my way for a few minutes? That one Dumb Bass I had to give a head's up more than once. yes that guy is stripping forms right in front of my track, in the bind. We made some grade for sparky.
The shop bays are about ready to go gray. I was up working on a short addition groundwork. Part of it is moving the sewer connection through the new building to outside of it. This green pipe does not meet code for pipe inside the building footprint. We had to locate it and dig alongside for the replacement DWV pipe. The building behind is live so it will get cut in quickly once they are all ready. Note that it is not straight. They bent it a little bit at each joint, making it fun to dig alongside without hitting it.
We met my wife's cousin's for monthly breakfast. Only a couple showed up today and we are not meeting in July and August because everybody gets busy. I took my own car and then exercised some of the freedom that makes this job bearable. We were scheduled to backfill this groundwork on Monday, and a pair of rain events are rapidly approaching from out on the Pacific. It is going to dump 1"~2" over Sunday and Monday afternoons. I would much rather do this in the dry. We did not have big plans and I had a pleasant busy morning and afternoon getting it done. The product is better, and I'm not going to fight the rain on Monday. I don't care a whit about overtime, I am logging my work hours in terms of days. I still made it home in time to mow the lawn. Same view after hammering in the stuff. I had rough backfilled it Friday night after they tied it in, just to make the hole safer. I caught the plumber by surprise, he had not pulled the test and glued in the plug so I left this little hole open. Those three slopes are hammered tight. There is the groundwork in the distance. A pair of bathrooms and a break room sink against the building. So much nicer to have it healed before the rain.
I wish all plumbers would do there digging and backfill like this. Great job!
Thank you. The groundworks guys were there today too. They had the same ideas. Work today and skip both Monday and Tuesday. The rest of the week looks good. We had brought two rain leaders out and backfilled them, just out of the building. That would be the same distance out as the clean out above in orange. I pulled the excess and crap dirt just out of the building proper and covered it. The piers are for a huge canopy in front of the building. They knew they would make a big mess with the rain, so they proactively tied one in, and put in an 8' flex pipe over to a CB to contain the water until they can set another CB. A third rain leader got nailed by the geopier drillers, and if they had not fixed it the downspout pipe would have backed up something fierce. I had explored and found that one for them. They fixed it and all that roof rain is under control. Proactive thinking wins the week.
I'm up working on the cabin job probably for a couple of weeks. It'll be good to get something done for a change.
I spent most of the day taking down the stacks of material and separating it out so we can get to each numbered unit without moving another.
WOW!
Wish I could post more but the forum is really wonky now. That is the first picture I could post in a couple of days, and apparently the last.
I haven't had an issue. Updated my pic thread last night with no issues.
It appears to be tied to my account because I can log out of both my phone and my Chromebook, log back in. It doesn't change anything and it's the same from each device. I posted up a question in the support form. Hopefully someone will look into it.
I posted pictures yesterday, and had no problems. Might check how large of images you are trying to post, if you have gotten a new camera/ computer recently. For a while about 4-6 months ago, I had to resize all my photos down before posting. I hadn't had to do that in a long time, but now- and I haven't changed anything on my end- I don't have to resize again, I can just post. I have no idea why.
I will host the photos off site and link back. I made an epic parts run to the nearest town an hour away. Small town, small selection, and I went to 4 hardware stores and struck out on some of the list. The plumbers really missed a wall line so we have to build a 2x8 rather than a 2x6 wall to contain all the plumbing and electrical. Unfortunately it is a bearing wall to add to the complication. It was noon and they were preparing to send out the cavalry when I got back. Things got real, we started laying out and measuring the king post. It is a feature log that goes from basement to loft. We get to cut the bottom 10' and set it, key in glu-lam beams with a chain saw, and cut it exactly flush with the subfloor of the first floor. He went over to Montana to pick it out. It is a massive 26" pine log that does not really taper in that first 10'.
Yesterday we laid out the spot on the floor and stood it up, rotated to the best appearance. It rocked ever so slightly. I lofted it up a bit and 5 minutes with a sanding disk and it was good to go. We scribed it for the top cut with the laser, dropped plumb bob and marked the glu lam locations with a plumb line and set grade of the beams with the laser, tripped it back down and went to work on it. We are ready to stand it up permanently this morning. Here is sits looking through the picture window, about as subtle as a 40 oz FOSTER's on a table full of 12 Oz Miller lites. It puts the log in cabin. Other cabins have King Post envy. Under the knife. I made plunge cuts on each side with my BigFoot baby beam saw. He did most of the sawing, I finished up the big pocket and had a couple of bad touches, so I get to learn touching that up with sawdust and glue and maybe a little sharpie
Really cool! Nice job with the mortises!
We got it stood up and wonder of wonders, the mortises are right on grade. We built the back 2x8 bearing wall that goes in line, and stood it and fitted that little glu lam. Enjoying the views
There used to be a show about Pioneer log homes called Timber Kings. Those guys were absolutely brilliant with chain saws. They taught the forestry service. One guy said he could be more accurate with a chainsaw than a circular saw. They were also ingenious at securing all the log components. Most used used dowels to get everything lined up properly and they'd use really long lag bolts. Sadly they lost a few million dollar homes either complete or under construction due to a massive wildfire that went through Williams Lake BC a few years ago. They build all the homes at their facility and then take them apart for shipping. They sell all over the world. There's also some masterful wood carvers that do incredible work with chainsaws.
What’s up with the tarps on the walls? Protecting the icf’s from water/uv?
UV. They will get chalky if you leave them in the sun. We have to put in the floor as a shear diaphragm before backfilling. After we get the floor on, there is a waterproofing membrane that also does not like the sun. Waterproof to above the fill line, backfill and compact. Then I can get the telehandler to reach past mid-building from either side. I would like to have a 56' telehandler but all the local rental guys have is this 42'.
To contrast, we are absolutely beginners with cutting mortises. those are the first. Neither one of us has built a cabin like this.
Makes sense. Are you putting a stone veneer over the ICF?
No idea
What a view!
I like the big skies. There is always something different to see in the sky, the weather.
Know that here. Would not change it for the City
First day back on the job. After a big break and lots of drama. I got a full load of rock and a couple trench boxes on board, and a drive tire unzipped about 10 mi before I got to where I was going. I limped it down the highway and then when I got here I noticed antifreeze on the floor by the heater core. It's a good time to turn off the heater lines LOL!
Sitting at Les Schwab, waiting on a tire. At least I could borrow a pair of channel locks and turn off the heater leak.
pics of the gig. here are the 3 pipes we buried a couple of months back. Plus a deep one that the site guys brought in. I chased the board pieces down and cleared it off with the machine, and removed the cap no extra charge. Aluminum 8' Plus steel 4x12. We are dug <2' out the bottom. The ground is sloping down while the pipe is sloping up to me, so we got done with the boxes today and I returned them. This is the deep line with several stubs up to the tank area. I have to backfill that and then dig the other two in, 2' on center. One is a diameter lower so it is a 3-peat.
I like those aluminum boxes. Couldn't bench the section pass the cross ditch hence the 4' box?
I don't do much benching. I had heard that it was 5 and 1/2 ft deep at least and that's hard as hubs there. I'd much rather keep a nice crisp edge to work with when I go to backfill it then have a big gow in the earth to fix.
We worked today and finished the job. Those pipes are at the pain in the arse height for a machine with a butt. Normally they leave things down but the couplers are $pendy and the tanks will be about that high. The machine has been there several months and it is finally coming back to the shop. The plumber asked for a ramp in so he has a couple of options now.
That's a really big hole to fill, and the bench behind it is ~4' higher than the planned subgrade for the back porch. I wanted a 15 ton excavator and a roller; I got an 8 ton and a 330 pound plate. It has been a slow go. you can see how high the bench is here. Planned subgrade is about a foot down below the rim board, maybe a foot and a half. That is some hard digging for the Case 75. Big bones in there that won't work in small lifts so I do a lot of filtering. The "Mikasa is su casa" plate does a good job whacking it, I have to watch how much water I lay on it or it loses traction. That is one sled you don't want to manhandle.
That is a Big Hmmm. Site contractor not realize time is as valuable as rental on machines? Awesome work as usual Skyking1
The rental place we have the telehandler from, the one he does most business with has a 15 and a 16, but both are busy till at least Friday. We will be stacking the first logs by then. I should have called the other outfit and insisted on bigger iron. They did not have a roller though. It was a comedy of errors. They tried and could not load the 5K roller on the slick deck behind the excavator. The plate is not the holdup, the toy of an excavator is. I have about 3' to go and will put on the digging bucket and tear into the bank. Admittedly, the double drum roller would have been a PITA at the bottom of the fill.
The fellow that dug this had a 300, and placed the spoils where it was convenient to HIM! I had to go to the top of the slope and get it. It was a few tosses to get where I was going. This is a discouraging view. the other way. I left a bench road with a wedge of the bony stuff where he can run the fence line with his side by side.
Man that is a lot of extra work!
I'd use a dozer. Why didn't you?
There is a whole lotta this to sort out. I kept the dirt small against that waterproofing membrane using the hoe. There is so much rock I have 1' stuff in the 1' lifts, but I can swing it away from the wall as I place it.
speaking of rocks, maybe you remember the Leaverite I went past building the road? I had a 21K pound dozer and gave it a little test love tap. Nope. Some of this is fracture rock, looks solid but you can get it to bust apart. This thing had the F U heat treat on it. I went right on by So his girlfriend is an owner/operator with a new Kubota 35 and skid steer. She does good work but does not have a ton of real world experience, and she just HAD to try and get the Leaverite with a 35. It cracks me up every time when somebody says hold my beer. So how did that go for you again? " this rock just keeps getting bigger" I suppose I could relent and roll it out with the 75, but what is the fun in that?
Ahhh.... The learning times..... Should have seen me try and roll some rocks out that turned out bigger than the bucket on a IH 175C....
I've been there too. I got onto one in a field with my back hoe. By the time I was done, there was a grave big enough for an elephant. I finally dug beside the rock as deep as I could and rolled that monster down into it. It'll come back some day, but hopefully it's my kids problem by then. At least for now, I won't break the plow on it.
Heh.. You grow them up there as big as we do!
We grow them, but not often do we find the extra jumbo leaverite's. We have glacial till, so a lot of pea gravel up to basketball size. Softballs to watermelon is very common size to deal with. There are a lot gravel pits in my county, and more trying to be opened every year because of the amount of easily mineable gravel we have.
She wants it rolled up out of there and then rolled upright in the same orientation, just a few feet away. I can manage that much. @colson04 I have had to lose big stones like that too. This is the Way
Heard of that around the old family place at Arcadia MO, Elephant Rocks State Park is there. Some bigger than school buses.
I got lil nug nug up on the surface. I had to set up a ramp and slide it up, then hold it and persuade it until it liked that spot, then repeat. ( Say Lil nug nug with Beetlejuice voice for proper effect) They thought the rock was a hazard by the road!
Damn that is a lot of rock for that little machine. Slow and steady I guess.
I did not have to go all out. I made a ramp, got up tight on it, and started it up. Then you hold it and wait for the dirt to compact, then move it a bit more. No way could I track or reposition or get another grab I would have lost it. What is all out? Filling in behind it with a bunch of stuff, rock it, the stuff falls in, repeat repeat repeat.
I brought the grade up around the house to 20" below FF at the building, and made as much flat spot as I could for landing log bundles. That represents two steps in front of the porch for a total of 3 rises. I was pleased with compaction; this is a casual proof roll with the 25K forklift. It is about like the steer tire on an empty truck for pressures. There is no flatwork planned, only a row of porch pier footings at 6' away from the building all around. They will be dug down 3' for frost here. I put lot of time in the lifts up to the last one, since I knew we would be digging right through a couple to get frost bury. That last one I blew in at 18" or more deep and it is holding up fine. This is the final disposition of lil nug-nug. It is high and proud, and far enough off the road for most idiots. They were so set on moving it because a contractor supervisor drove up the driveway like a bat out of hades, probably looking at his phone and hit it! Bent rim, flat tire, broken A-arm, trashed it pretty bad. Gotta pay attention folks. We got to about here last night, then put on some shorts and got in that lake in the pictures to cool off.
Beautiful. What kind of subfloor are you using?
Lil nug-nug needs some brothers and sisters, he's all alone out there.... Very nice view!
typical 23/32" Canadian OSB T&G. It is all included in the package. It is very complete with adhesives and sealants and fasteners. It gets solid 1" pine flooring over that for the proper cabin effect.
Modeling that banister post that goes all the way up from the basement and catches two landings. It has some nice features and we've figured out where we're going to clock it to use them.
Just as soon as we got a couple of screws in that and figured out where it was going to be, I went to work making that stairwell safe. I don't have to take a 10-ft fall to concrete to know that I wouldn't like it.
Whatcha got going on there with the osb under the rim?
shimmy shim for fixing grade. When doing ICF pours, it is critical to check everything and the guys helping him did not. It took ~1/2" to fix it up, and they also did not pull a tape or square and that open end is 1.5" larger than it was planned to be. They poured a little fast. This can cause jacking on the blocks too, hence the 1/2" high area.
I learned from his issues here. 1) I avoid the dimension bust by having a full rectangle pour instead of that open end for the prow, so that one is a gimmie. 2) I will screw a full sheet of OSB to each corner. The blocks have screw strips @8" OC. Get it all plumbed and checked and square, then apply that sheet on the outside. I will even lap it over onto a 2x2 I put on the first sheet. The corners are where all the drama is at. 3) more small lifts is better. They really hammered it in there, and poured into the corner too fast. 4) pull squares and stringline it while it is wet, Dangit! 5) double check grades and screed it with the laser. There should be no issue, but not checking is bad berries. Easy to screed it a little below the block and shave styrofoam compared to grinding hard mud. Or shimming.
I’m sure you’ve seen the adjustable screw braces for ICF pours, those look like the best way to stabilize the walls and still allow for fine tuning once the concrete is poured. They’re lucky they didn’t blow out a form pouring it too fast.
He had those. The issue I had was, they did not have a proper ladder nor did they put up the posts and safety rails. I got up there to trim off the nubs with a saw, but once the "hired guys who had done this before" showed up, this old man got down off of there. You had to climb to the top of this aluminum A ladder to get on there. Screw that. I am putting up the rails, using an extension ladder, etc. Mine is slab on grade so we will hang the braces outside and also have rolling scaffold inside. Working in the trades, I am a "safety first" kinda guy. Note that I did not stop moving till that hole was safed off.
Witnessed a ICF Blowout here on a neighbors place, Wasted a good 1/2 yd. Batch was Too Wet. The other shoe that dropped is they now have a termite concern where are in the ICF Forms and cannot see them until in the walls. Home is but 7 years old and already the county with his insurer has considered condemnation. Was a consideration for a Barrier that the foundation supplier(OOB) decided was Unnecessary. Pest Control company could not fight what could never see.
They didn't use a PT mudsill? Would you treat whether you can see them or not? I wouldn't put it on the icfs, that's just not good maintenance on their part. Didn't they waterproof them like we have here?
Your project is at least well thought out and prepped, even as the Contractor screwed up the Layout and pour. Can see the seal covering on the outside in photo above, contact adhesive used for attachment? Most of that is Bug Proof then also can apply agents to floor of excavation to preclude the wood munchers access. Neither done here. And No, is Not ICF fault, but untreated is a fast food joint for the Termite Kingdom.
It is peel and stick and you'd better be ready to put it on because if it sticks to itself, you're screwed. Super easy to apply. Vertically. We tried one course horizontally and that was stupid lol.
He had leftover waterproofing and wrapped it from under the first log, down across the rim joist and stuck it to the waterproofing below. That's a heck of a bug seal!
It was a very slow go getting that first course bolted down to the concrete anchors and located properly. I busied myself with cleaning up messes. I made a platform box for the telehandler, a toolbox tray under the seat, put plywood on a pallet to make a dump tray to haul scrap to the pile with. Things like that. I am not going to ramrod this gig and I need to stay busy. There is only this back door to get in so I made some serviceable steps for it from scraps. Finally got to set some logs yesterday. Special delivery!
Nice saw work there.....
yep, the logs are all milled and the swedish cope and the cuda cuts done. Just cut to length at interior joints, cut window and door bucks etc.
What is being used between them?
Great stuff glue. The logs are fastened with 12-in lags 1/2-in diameter countersunk into the log on 36 centers. You could look up the company. It's called Lazarus log homes in Montana. They've made thousands and thousands of these houses. All of the timber is fire kill stuff that is very dry and then it's kiln-dried. They machine it to a standard, in this case. 9 in diameter and then cut the swedish cope in it. There are special logs that are cut for the distance between window and corner and between two windows. For instance, those are marked so that you don't use them elsewhere, but the rest of it are just b for blank logs or and for notched with the cuda cut on them. They stack so tightly that there is very little settling unlike a giant log house with logs produced on site. That shrink like crazy. There is a 2-in gap above any window and door buxk for settlement but they don't expect the house to settle more than 1 in overall. It's just the industry standard. On a larger Long home They would have a 3- in gap. Thousands of homes of experience and never have had any of that giant prow glass break because of! settling. We're going to build the interior framed wall that stands on the frame wall below it in the basement about 3/4 of an inch to an inch lower to allow for the loft to settle on the outside edges. That's about it.
Blue Grouse in the shop. He would not leave. I poked him in the arse with a 2x4 and he just changed places. These are the typical cutoffs so far. I am being very frugal with the tape measure while selecting logs. We will move the scaffold up from the basement tomorrow. I got a second set of rollers so we will have two sets of rolling work platforms. It is getting about time. I have the book of all the units of logs, and I get the next courses ready and am waiting. I think this helps with the hired guys. Ahem. This log is standing by.
Today was "help your neighbors" day. My friend went for a resupply, which is a few hours away, and I went to another nearby cabin job and set the subfloor out there. He was packing it a sheet at a time across that 2x10. I drove over and hit the easy button. See the hill across the valley, the break in the trees in front of the boom in the first picture? I had to drive down in the valley and back up to the next gig, a barn raising to set loft beams. Check out these rough fir timbers! They were sawn 13 miles away on a small mill. It is the typical witches hat shape with a loft in the center under the high pitch.
Feels good to be the White Hat some days.
Looks like you could have a retirement job building log homes!
This is what I see for my retirement. Fun stuff in good weather. I will not be over here in December unless it is warm and dry inside.
Today we set the corner prow posts so we can stack the rest.
I figured out a way to handle the logs safely. The builder wants to locate, temporary screw down, then drill for the big bolts. Then remove the log and blow out all the chips from the hole, etc. Then put down the glue and the log, and bolt it down. I place the forks very close to the log and at the right grade, and level. When they are ready, the crew rolls the log onto the forks out of the way. No need to lift it. They put down the glue and roll it back. We are getting along OK. One more course of logs and then it is the header logs over windows and doors.
I take it no recommends on fillers for the large splits on the logs? Will they harm end project?
I thought I had mentioned that. There is a product called "conceal" that dries to a very close match to the logs. They will do that later, before finishing. The kit came with cases of that, glue, fasteners, everything. https://loghomemart.com/products/co...iKWmUmJty85m1Sm5efogeSO82PhI0-ycaAsd0EALw_wcB
Seems like a pretty thorough package that they sent. I assume that he had to pick the stain color when he ordered the package?
don't know about stains or sealers. That may not be in the package as it is subjective. So far I have been impressed with the QC and ease of the build. I found one derpy log that will be firewood, but there are plenty of extras.
when I ran out of hours with that 8 ton, I had some unfinished business. This nasty knob of imbedded nuggets was cramping my style. So I borrowed the neighbor's D4. I have to give some respect to that rental case 8 ton now. I had to rip and rip for every push with that 4. I got it pared down and cuffed off. And took it around the corner to the north for more driving real estate with the forklift. I could not reach the front with the log swung parallel. Now I think I have it.
sitting on the edge of the fill with a 26K telehandler is a little sketchy. This is about as close as I would push it, and it still was not good reaching for the front corner. I ran out of carriage swing. So I ran down below to set the corner log this course. Maximum effort!! That is squirted all the way out. Tomorrow I will take the D4 down there and build a ramp. Right now it is nugget storage.
Today was the big day. The crew and I set logs while my friend and his buddy prepared the king log, which supports the center of the roof and some of the loft joists. I had done a test pick on the log and was comfortable with it at 26' from face of tire to load center. Then they cut 5' off the butt end to make it even better. Pick was estimated at 22'. I clamped my tape measure to the carriage and ran it out to 25' to simulate the log, and made a dry run to check geometry and get the approach path set. Nobody wants any drama with the live load. up and over and down, in the blind. Let the shimming begin! Enjoying the new view before taking off the rigging.
I should have slept in this morning. These guys wanted to cut all four for this side and then have me set them one after the other. Well a guy has to have some fun. I kept moving the sling till I got the angle right and then I got the nice spin on it and landed it. @crane operator knows what I'm talking about. Handing off the iron to the Ironworkers without knocking them off the scaffolding.
It's been a bit of a dry spell. I had a small job to dig in sand. The plumber had set a couple of sleeves under the footings in advance. here is one of them. The other one is under this mass of concrete that the concrete contractor, in all his wisdom and experience, decided to waste here rather than get backcharged to dispose of it. Inside the building footprint. The dirt guy said that is a good place for it. I lost my cool, and I don't think he will ever do that again. The dirt guy was as responsible as he was, but the concrete guy caught the brunt of it. Don't bury garbage or broken pipe or concrete. It will bite you in the arse sooner than later. It was more than the mini could break up. Luckily there was a little sand over that sleeve, and our ground guy is a veritable caveman. If it can be done he will do it. I cleared out a bunch of bulk and then he hand tunneled through. That is just his shoulder and a foot visible.
it is always fun to revisit jobs. remember this muddy mess from last winter? The big pressure piping
Digging post holes for a fence and finding a gas pipe is pretty un-nerving. Turns out it was a left over piece someone through in hole before final grade was done.
Massive racks of big PVC The waterfall cuts in this 12" Those risers Not so far out of the ground now. The footings are for 50,000 gallon tanks.
you can sure waste a lot of time trying to figure that out.
We were thinking the unity locator made a mistake. The saving grace was that it wasn't hissing. Still scary when I feel something and lift the auger to expose a gas line.
Had issues with the contractor on the house here, bought a magnet and brought out a rake with shovel every time I came to site to clean up what they tossed in excavation around the foundation. Chased that until their last day here. Gathered bags of lunch trash, wrappings from every piece of componentry brought on site, just felt we were the dumpster for their leftovers.
Nuke Plant site was a Running CLSTR FK, Conduits from Constructions Days, Piping for Water and Waste same basis, then Pre installs for the Second Unit that never got built, was always a Classed EMERGENCY Emergent Violation by Excavation Contractors as to something dug up. Then had some major Steel Piping needed replacement, were installing HDPE Large Diameter stock, MASSIVE digs, Exposed so much NEW garbage piles, Buried materials the original Contractor had just chucked in a hole and covered up. Really Sad what some contractors attempt to get away with.
The local telephone company got a grant to run high speed fiber out past our farm. They hired a third party contractor to install. They knifed in a lot of it, going right through folks gravel driveways, only stopping where they couldn't run the vibra-plow. They had Miss Dig out, but still plowed right through the 2" Gas line that supplies our grain dryer. Thankfully it was mid summer of 2023 and we didn't need to be using it, but I guess they had quite the bill to pay for their damages. We went rounds with them to get our driveway straightened out properly. They tried to leave it a mess, like everywhere else they touched. Glad when they left the area.
Had a fiber contractor here that managed to bounce the mole off a 30" high pressure nat gas main.....bet that left a mark when someone had to pay for an emergency excavation, pipe inspection and backfill. Ed
New neighbours bought a $4 million Canadian house built by a local builder. The new people are in the garbage business and filled 2 compactor garbage trucks full of junk that was buried during construction while cleaning up and finishing the landscaping.
The worst is when you find large piles of concrete from cement trucks when you're doing the final grade.
It's fun pulling up leftover pipe that got thrown in the ditch when you're trying to find a 2" pressurized sewer lateral that comes into the lot from the middle of the street.
There was an out of state HDD contractor doing work for AT&T in town. They hit multiple gas lines, smoked 6 sewer lines that I repaired and who knows how many more. They were always trying to con homeowners into letting them repair the sewer lines. The thing that finally got them shut down has hitting a LPD Captain's sewer line.
something different today. we were putting in a flat trench drain in the shop of a Danish pump manufacturer. To say they did little to prepare for us is an understatement. Cranes everywhere. Toolboxes. The impeller balancing machine Coming from the other direction. you can see the transport trench behind and going to the right of the machine there. The trench drain ran to that corner behind me. I dug the transport pipe in, broke a 2" pipe for a floor drain that we tied in to the new pipe, dug up a clean out so we could San tee this new line into it. Then they piped it and I backfilled and restored that trench and mobilized back out of there. They have a day or two dinking around with the trench drain.
Should have started the "meter" and sat there waiting for the idiots to move everything out of your way. That's just really ignorant!
I was in an out in the day allotted, and got the job done. It's what we do
We have one of those here. Moore Gear. Production never sleeps just gets rearranged around expansions or upgrades or improving facilities. Contractors play that same game here.
Well that concrete slurry is the gift that will keep on giving to them for a long time. Should've moved more out of the way...
I'm back over working on the cabin job trying to get it dried in.
16OC pretty Tight Roof! Or are they 24"OC
it is 24" Nasty chilly wind today. It was a joy flying those up there. The next few days look better.
You clamping to the I joists, or screwing something on them? Better hurry, going to get cold soon.
?? we choked them with a 2" nylon for hoisting. Each end gets 6 nails through the lower webs, and the top corner is wrapped with a Simpson strap. full blocking at the top of the walls.
I'm blind. I thought in the you tube picture it was just grabbed on the top, but its the beam in front of it that I'm seeing. Sorry.
A little sheathing and all good!!
We are getting closer. The blocking is all in and we figured out square on it.
That looks a lot like work. Lol. I hate installing steep roofs (or roofs in general) Those log cabins sure have a sharp appeal though. Those folks have a wonderful view from the looks of what you have shared.
It is very nice and especially this time of year. The resident elk herd moves through all the time and the bull was bugling when I took this picture tonight. Crappy picture but that is a sow bear and her cub yesterday. The herd was hanging out not far away from her. Yesterday's sunset from those big windows on the cabin.
Biggest appeal, the view.
I made some step jacks that are inclined into the roof 10 degrees. It is about right on the 12:12 pitch.
Looks great! Are they doing a metal roof?
Yea we are putting on the rain and ice shield for the winter, and then after the porches are built next year we'll put the metal on. Last night's progress picture.
Nice Aurora background
We were going to get up later last night but didn’t wake up until 4:00 when the dog dropped on my hip.
Yesterday afternoon my neighbor Lee, my wife Mary and our new dog headed over here to work on the cabin again. It's about a 6-hour drive. Adding one guy to that platform triples production.
One side sheeted.
Henry water and ice shield.
Today we finished sheeting the north side and got it covered for winter. He needs a couple more rolls and the neighbor will help him finish the south side.
Looks great! What was your impression on the Henry membrane? Out here Henry is available, but very uncommon so I’ve never used it.
looked like a PITA from the forklift seat. the back is in two pieces which helps with the peel and stick operation, but I have no frame of reference on it.
Haha, all ice and water shield is a PITA…. Watching from the forklift seat is a good place to be!
I'm not using it on our house. I'll double lap feltex and put the metal on and forget it. I don't have ice dam issues with the weather we have.
I did the first gig in 3 months. Monday I mobilized in and it was pretty miserable, overall. Snow and ice on snotty black peaty stuff. The retired part of me is completely over this. But the guy who is borrowing a 120 and a dump truck is committed to help out for a while yet. I had a Starbucks and a shell and core to dig. Both of them are stepped trenches with the sanitary 6 in lower than the grease line. Those are slow going. The guys working on the site were down in an 8-ft hole plus, no shoring. Yes that ladder is going down into infinity, It seems. It would be Infinity if there was a cave in.
No excuse for being in a hole that deep with out benching, sloping or shoring - period! Job we are on the same happened this week. Deep 6" sanitary tie in to a manhole in the street probably 12-14' deep. There were 2 gas lines running from the manhole to the curb that made it difficult to put in shoring so they just winged it. 3 guys in a deep trench making a tie in. Makes my blood boil. On a total tangent - you need some dental work.
I think the pins in the 1 ton, the tooth is under the seat of the dump truck, and my pin tool is up here at the house job. I'm pretty scattered these days!
Ain't nothing more fun than a floating 1200 gallon septic tank. Park the mini-ex on it! Cool, now how do we dig the field? Easy....go rent a pump and fill the tank with the green slimy water from the unmaintained in-ground pool! Like watching a bunch of monkeys screwing a football. Ed
Even more fun as float all the way out of the hole and flip Upside Down then sink Seen that as end result.
I went to backfill that job and first thing tripped over an ice ridge and jammed up my wrist a little on landing. They did not send me a ground guy so I shoveled all day with that wrist and the other hand full of arthritis. They are making that last day easy for me to walk away. I mobed out just before dark.
Been a while. I last did a job in March. Today I mobed to a shell and core and then ran for pea gravel for tomorrow. The quarry is hosting one of the big crane players in their yard spaces. Here is a drive through of crane porn. Big Grove Stretched out 60 getting some grease love. No sign of the rest of this crawler
More 60's Nice carrier, I wonder where they are hiding the rest? Couple more Groves The quarry is also a demolition company. check out the new container based debris net for downtown and highway jobs. Aluminum poles and cut open container to catch as much as possible.
the container is pretty slick. Roll it over to clean it out?
Neat application of the container system. Need to hire a dude with a golf club and have him yelling, FORE!
Most demo have skid steers all over. I would guess they would muck out most of it with skid steers. The cut out sides I have seen on the highway jobs. It's like a catcher's mitt and corrals the stuff pretty good.
I got my medical renewed today, and stopped by Loves truck stop on the way back. This guy seems to be doing it right, I watched him checking tires and tie downs all the way around before he got going again. This one? who knows the numbers might be good but it just looks like so much ass to me. It was heavy on the hitch and ass low, and probably compounded by the wrong drop hitch. The forks over the top and the box scraper hanging on the 3 point were a matched set of BS. I wonder if the bucket is in the back of the truck? I got the heck out of there ahead of him. EDIT: I just noticed his 4k ratchet strap across the side boards. What a maroon.
I always wonder why I never see the WA State Patrol Commercial Vehicle Troopers dealing with Idiots like this, they always seem to get a Free Pass. This is all to common across WA State, guys hauling mini excavators and tractors in dump trailers without being properly tied down or the trailer overloaded.
We dug and plumbed a shell and core today, with a grease waste and sanitary lines together but 6" different elevations. Stepped trenches are a PITA! Good import on top, and black crap valley peat/soil below. I have to segregate as I go. More PITA. We came up a little short at the end of the day. I ran for more pea but underestimated the level of suckage that the traffic was, and did not make it. Traffic was nuts. Tick Tock this job BS is on a short timer.
another commercial dig. I got there Monday to start and the site guys were all over the layout, fixing a big grade bust in the footings. We usually come in after footing and stemwall for many reasons. This time we have a circus. Grease waste on the left leaving, and sanitary on the right. That is a kitchen flustercluck with sanitary and grease lines crossing over.
Can almost make out the Three Rings, as well the Elliefant Pedestals!! Gotta hate a time imposition Stressed Jobsite
we will knock it out before they get stemwalls poured, I suspect. I grabbed the hoe pack and then told them to go ahead and form me in. I stopped by a few minutes late this morning and graveled what they had piped. I jumped up and over this pile. We broke this job into two inspections because of access issues. I started the day rigging a couple of big air to water heat pumps for the Fair job. One of the guys has a rigging card but I think his signaling brain fell out. I sent the first unit at them and the operator and I shared some "seriously?" looks at the signals. I rigged the 2nd one and ran up there to give some instruction.
Lots of big rock at that job, glacial till. I do not have a screen or screen bucket. My method is to do some filtering as I fill the the bucket, and then use the natural screening effect of a pile. I drop the dirt carefully on the risers and stay centered on them. All the bigger stuff rolls away down hill, and my ground guy moves any that need to be moved off the pipes. This leaves the riser nicely cased with small stuff.
We moved from that job to a storm pipe repair near home today. This storm pipe serves about 5 acres of parking lot, and has been chronically plagued with tree roots. It is a single point of failure on the last run to the control structure. They have had it jetted many times. I grubbed off the offending trees and set the stage. The structure upstream was full so I sent my guy to get the pump, and happily out of my way for slinging trees. It became clear what the nature of the problem was. The cottonwoods had found the pipe in the loose gravel fill and this was exacerbated by the extreme hardness of the hardpan on either side of the trench. It was very hard digging. The trees naturally got a good start in the loose material then they found the bonanza of pipe full of water. I think it was installed without care and all it takes is one leaky joint or poke a hole. I busted into it and started ripping out chunks. I could not peel out whole sticks because those roots had anchored it down like tie-downs. I found 18" pipe-filling root balls all along the way. The pipe is full of water even after pumping the upstream structure. I think I will have to tear out at least one more stick to get to the end of the roots. we ripped out about 40 feet. That was a good start. They laid the pipe backwards, but I doubt that was the problem. Somehow I think stabbing a new stick in an old bell is not going to happen. The bells look D-shaped to me. I may band both ends of the repair.
I may also pour in the joints at the end of my work with concrete. I told the owners that this area must be mowed and kept clear of trees, FOREVER MORE!!
Great work on the Glacial Till, what a mess on the drain tile.
We dug out 3 sticks worth and the pipe cleaned up, but it still has 3" of backfall. Wankers. I am putting it together and the management group has made arrangements to mow it going forward.
Good morning to us. It didn't rain but a spit. This is just all coming out of the ground around the structures and pipes up in the parking lot. I went and checked and the outflow is working. This system is going to run at a quarter pipe all the time. A full fix would remove the outflow structure re-dig the outflow, ditch Swale and work my way back to the pavement. They really cheesed it up.
Then it rained. I had them bring out a rental pump. It is no good setting that smooth wall, it really floats high. They bid it without bedding. Thankfully I had about 4 ton of pea gravel from the other job. Just enough to springline it Done.
Nice Job!
Very Nice Work! Thank you for sharing with us.
Thanks. They bid the job decently high and should make some cabbage on it. I figure I'm 2000 a day with machine, my pipe guy is 1000 and they did OK.
We had a quick little shell and core job today for a fast food chain. I had worked the area last winter and it was easy digging so I brought the mini. Easy digging? famous last words. Fish on baby! That was the proverbial tip of the iceberg. It left this crater but what remained was 3x as large, roughly 13' of rebar connected stemwall rubble. I got the first rope of junk without too much drama, but the next one would not budge. There were 3 excavators on the site, all 3 were JD 35G models I drug that up out of there and the GC got a cutoff wheel and snipped the connecting bar so I could toss it out. I encountered a few more and one piece I worried until I broke the bar off and left the rest. What a PITA.
turning in the keys gets easier all the time. I mobed into a new job today and as usual, they were not ready. I busted my ass to get things done and clean up the machine and load it in the dark last night. I look at it and see a huge headache ahead. The People Who Run the Show apparently lost their clues. It is 8 units per building, and rather than a perimeter footing and column pads, each unit gets it's own complete footing and stemwall. Like 8 cells of a beehive. We have to tunnel under every footing. I counted 16 hand tunnels in that first building, and they already have the footings formed and rebar in place on the second one. So 16 more hand tunnels. HAVE ANY OF YOU IGNORANT Q#$^&YU&R HEARD OF SLEEVES? I guess not. You can be damn sure buildings 3~11 will get laid out and sleeved right after the dirt crew cuts the footings.
The general superintendent came up and watched me for a while and then he said you should have been in here 2 weeks ago putting in sleeves. He opened that door. I proceeded to light him up on every subject at hand. The first one being deep stuff goes in first and I'm having to **** around these footing drains going under them. The footing I was in the process of tunneling under was 4 in too deep because they didn't keep grade. It was at the high end of the job and we were lucky we made it. I'm completely filterless now. If you're doing stupid, I'll tell you.
Atta boy! My tolerance for stupid is less and less every day. My guys just roll their eyes when I light someone up on a jobsite. They pay these GC 's big money to "manage" the project, and they put some young guy fresh from college or promote the safety guy to be in charge. They sit in the job trailer and stare at the schedule and plan meetings, while the job turns into a sh#7show. And then "its the subs" screwing up. Glad to see your progress on the house.
Went to the yard and went to the Sand plant, main hwy thru the next county North is being repaved and the equipment staged around the Sand Plant access Road. Second Load up came down to a ***** in process as Milling machine sat partially across Road, Water truck filling said Milling machine an added piece, behind those was a Pickup and trailer loaded with ****, they were unloading pallets with a Skid Steer. So being the ASS I am growing into, I fished the Tractor Trailer in a and around thru this, MUCHO Nasty Looks, spotted what appeared the Super, explained this is a PRIVATE BUSINESS DRIVEWAY, and to Make Money it needs to be OPEN. I moved on as he nodded slightly and smiled saying NADA. Set the General at the Sand plant on this mess of Crap, and as I left loaded, the road was Opened back up. My Hold Back leash to my *** Attitude has been BROKEN a Long Time.
One of the last tunnels and we are about out of grade. Note the over pour and also over depth by about 4" That just about sunk us. Cut that crap out of the way. Then I pushed or beat chunks of 3" sch40 pipe through with the machines. That loosens it up for my shovel guy. That's about when the SUP walked up and opened his piehole. I have been dodging that green crap and fabric a day and a half and I was primed. 1 rule, 1 rule only. Deep Stuff Goes in First!
Another day in paradise!!
Once they were done digging footings the 3rd building, the plumber called me over at 12:45 to put in the sleeves. By 13:53 we were done, set to grade on a 1% slope and all lined up. The SUP showed up and said he was glad to see me smile, and that he did not realize I was tunneling around that footing drain crap a half dozen times and my guy was hand digging a dozen tunnels. I think we have an understanding now.
I was lucky as an apprentice electrician to sit in on some site meetings on a big Reno/addition project on a shopping mall. I learned a lot about how things should be done from the old Italian super on site. I was there near the start of the job when there was not a lot going on and he had time.
No picture but I alluded to a story in Spud's thread. I was pushing with a 9N about 4 miles from the cut, building this little 1 acre island that would form when the dam backed up. I had 4 trucks and had to wait eons it seemed, at night. Dump push push push. shut down. It was rotten rock and you could not massage it much it just got worse. So the next truck woke you up and repeat. Well I tried to get cute and got stuck in that crap. I never got back on top of it, I 4 barreled and drug material under, and got pretty sideways until I hit bottom, then I punched my way out the side of the fill and circled back on top. The next few loads I patched up my booboo from the sides without getting in again. Time heals all. The drivers kept dumping, at least two of them. Later they told me, " well it seemed like you were moving a little" so they said nothing. I was not stuck but my mobility was very limited. Had I needed a hand it was a 4 mile walk with anything that had enough ass to help me out.
Getting ANY tracked machine 'Out of Limited Traction' , can be a rather injurious methodology, to both physical and ego base ends of spectrum!! I limited mobility of a TD9 one time, took two OTHER tracks to suck it from the quagmire I located it to. At least was not a four mile walk, those other two had to finish laughing to assist myself.
my filter is failing fast. Today 5 guys were standing around chewing the fat in the middle of the job, for an hour while me and my ground guy shaded pipe and jetted gravel into tunnels. I finally lost my stuff on the boss, the leader of the circle jerk. I said this old man is showing you guys up, grab a shovel and lend a hand. I'm not his supervisor, no. Quite the opposite. It is his job but I think he could tell I was just getting wound up. It was a very bad look and disrespectful of the owner who keeps them employed. If you want to fark oof do it in smaller groups and probably best out of my sight.
Sounds like the absolute morons who were managers when I worked at West Edmonton Mall. The roof leaked and flooded the skating rink and these 2 morons are leaning on the railing on the 2nd floor BSing while watching everybody below them trying to clean it up including the female general manager of the mall! I was walking back from a welding job on the 2nd floor with the other welder and we were just gobsmacked!! These managers didn't have an effing clue. One got the job because he went to the same church as the mall owners. I don't think the IQ between them would make triple digits. I also detest brown nosers who try to rat others out to try and make themselves look better and the bosses who love the brown nosers. Too stupid to see who the actual hard workers are. Unfortunately a lot of bosses have no business being in that position.
He came around today and was all smiles and happy. We have to work together. I hope I forged some understanding there with him. If not I can make a better attempt with Mjolnir
Getting a little UC Work in too?
that was 5 years ago. It was the only picture I had of the 12 pound sense knocker.
Is Thor camera shy?
he naturally finds his way to the bottom of any toolbox or container. Funny, that.
I've been dreading this out of town job. Narrow long building with access on one end only, clay. Then I find out the dirt squeeze had a really stupid plan for the thickened footings. He had the dirt crew dig down to native where ever there was one of these, and then brought up a column of 2x4 spalls ALL THE WAY UP. I was going to dig with mini but after I heard that, no way. So I mobed the mini back at dusk. Hooked up the tilt, backed it off the ATB and jackknifed it for easy bucket loading. Put on the headlight and started shoveling tracks. I got to my house about 10 and was able to spend a weekend with my wife. This is the before pictures of the nightmare.' Then I had to go 4' + deep and bring a trench between those for two pipes, with the spalls avalanching in the whole time. Use spalls he said, it will be strong. What a Maroon! The original layout per print had a line under each of those spalls footings.
Kitchen area has some cast iron pipe and big floor sinks. The spalls do not stand up. I had to make a heck of a gow in the ground to turn a 45 and a 90. I called it the foyer. They made discrete bands of spalls separated by decent enough borrow material, but it would never consolidate so if flakes off each other like slices of bread. Looking back down that trench I just started above. Long skinny H-shaped with mountains of mixed spalls and dirt. Oh joy to backfill. Day 1 I had to share access with the dirt guys who were not done importing spalls yet. Day 2 I had no access at all, because they were setting the lid on the storm detention vault. The site is so tight they threw the jeep inside the building with me.
Those miserable crane guys are always in the way.
I know right? I thought it was pretty rude when he threw the Jeep in there with me. He knew my ex- wasn't big enough to move it. Screw it up, yeah.
It would help if you could explain this stuff so people who aren't in that business could understand the different terms you're talking about.
The lingo is the fun part. Just cut and paste into chat GP and let it translate for you.
ATB= Asphalt Treated Base = cheap pre-paving that you abuse, then put a top course of B-modified over for the final surface. B-modified= The good paving. Smooth, no big rocks Jeep= what some of us call that doohickey that carries the crane boom going down the highway. Spalls= seriously, big sharp fractured rock that is particularly unfriendly to pipe. Storm detention vault= a big structure to hold storm runoff, with a metering orifice to release it slowly to the public systems. Mo Betta for fish and the like. Gow= a big crude bomb crater of a hole. Dirt Squeeze=informal for the soils engineer, the guy who pokes the soil with a probe or performs a nuclear compaction test if the material is good for that and he has a proctor. Proctor= a sample of the material being used that is weighed, measured, dried in an oven, sifted through a stack of screens to determine the makeup of the material. From this quantification, they determine the dry weight per cubic foot, the optimum moisture level for compaction.
Miserable crane guys=. Me walking onto a project - waving my arm in a 180°arc in the general direction of the building, and announcing "ALL THIS NEEDS MOVED OUT OF MY WAY - AND NO OTHER WORK WILL OCCUR HERE UNTIL I AM DONE" GC = the guys making all the money PM = kid 10 days out of college in the job trailer -who tells all the subs how to do their job JSA =paperwork that everyone fills out, no one reads, and gives the safety guy something to write down on his time card OSHA = the reason for no work getting done ICE=the reason for no work getting done Brickys= the guys who's stuff is in the crane guys way Ironworkers=also the guys who's stuff is in the way- but they aren't around because it rained 10 drops this morning Sparkys = also the reason for no work getting done, rumor is someone threatened them with a broom. Job schedule= a imaginary set of dates that the 13 year old PM posts up. Which the PM can't understand why it would change when it rains for 6 days and there's no budget for rock onsite Plumbers= always getting work done because hot on the left- cold on the right - **** goes downhill and payday is on Friday
Different terms different places - ATB = Binder course, same description B-modified = wear course Jeep=Dolly Spalls=Surge Rock Storm detention vault=underground detention can be concrete, metal or plastic Gow=Big ass hole Dirt squeeze=Dirt Doctor Proctor=same thing Miserable Crane Guys= the guys making all the money GC= may or may not have any clue what they are building but can somehow get the job PM=yeah that's pretty spot on JSA=file filler as stated OSHA= Blue hats that show up and shut a job down ICE= See OSHA "Bricky" or ******** as we call them = the ones who manage to go through every wet spot on the job site with a Lull and root around like a pig for no reason. Ironworkers= Same. They tuck their pants into their boots - enough said. Sparkies = Well known for trenching conduit across the job before it's cut to grade without asking what final grade is then bitching when we cut all their conduits out. Happens all the time. Job Schedule= Something made by the PM above. Basically something that is completely unrealistic made by the PM with ZERO experience in the construction industry that we subs have to abide by. Plumbers=Just like the crane guys - Making all the money.
Yeah the heck were them plumbers. As you know, I'm an operator.
And along with ALL Those are the Wrenches, the Cowards that WILL NOT EVER set foot on those Sites to repair or at least Look at broken machinery as require OSHA Hard Hats, safety toed shoes and nothing even associated to Grease or oil spillage.
I got that dream job backfilled and handed over to the dirt contractor today. It took 6 trips for pea gravel to defend the pipe against this pile of hammerheads and big nuggets. I mobilized back across the sound to stay now. I had to move the rig over and back 4 trips with city rush hour traffic, getting about 100 miles in 3~4 hours each time. To heck with that!
What a mess.
^^^^^^ What he said! Looks like whack a mole for 2” pvc pipes. Too long to call them stubs. My OCD had a overdose looking at those pics.
What an Utter PITA!
Lets bury these pipes in anvils and car batteries! what could possibly go wrong?
top of wall = top of slab. Those stubs are only about 8~10" above FF.
The honeymoon is over. I backfilled #4 last week after big rains, and it was the last time this material could go back. They claimed they did good job compacting it. I tried to approach the building to jump in there. Not happening here! We pumped it down and then Sam shoveled out more than a ton of goo before I could put in the material.
It sucks when you get a big rain at the wrong time especially when you have other jobs and customers are wondering when you're getting to their jobs. Then you have calls for new jobs and they expect you to be there tomorrow.
Just Damn!
That was last week. I'm working on building 5 this week and I'm on day three of what used to take me one day, 1.5 tops.
This job, this day was the last straw. As I drove in I called my wife and laid out the plan. I was going to call the Union Hall first to see what the status was, then I was going to inform my boss that my tank was full. I had enough with mud. I'll help them interview candidates, I will work on this building and they can have a guy there for the rest going forward. I can drive the truck and get pea gravel if the new guy is not CDL yet, I can shuffle the iron till they get it sorted out. Those are finite commitments, not dealing with messes like this. Good morning to us: The mini needs water wings. They wanted me to open that up with trenches, LOL. We bagged it, then I informed the boss about my limited future.
Monday was like this. See that telltale sinking crack there, with the footprint puddle in the middle? That is where the plumber went in while painting the lines. So we know what is up. The fill next to the footing is the consistency of a cheap milkshake, with just a little skin on top. Out it comes. Why did they bother putting it in? I went in and told the general before I got started that I would need 1 1/4" rock, a couple of boxes of it. He said they would pay, but he wanted me to get it. Oh no. Screw that. Call my boss if you want but this is how it goes. Your $@%^^E site, YOUR problem. He did call and my office told me to arrange to get it. I told the office to make the arrangements. I was done not getting support. So done now. Lo and behold, the GC figured out the dirt guys, had a truck coming this way. They diverted the EMPTY TRUCK to bring me the first box. Folks this is how it is supposed to happen, but apparently I have to educate everybody these days. That is what you have a dirt crew on site for. They have the trucks, the tools, the manpower. They can write those extra tickets because they are already doing so. I'm one guy with a box of clean pea gravel that I'm not dumping in the mud. But wait there is more if you are along this far. GC is listening to me make arrangements for a pump, and he has a pump he is not offering to de-water his own site. My boss remembers meeting notes about them having pumps etc for dewatering. Oh look here comes the 2" trash electric pump like the one I was going to rent, and now the hole is getting pumped. Using the plumber's personal generator for power of course. (FACEPALMING). I had to scoop alongside several footings like this with the 18" while each end kept collapsing in, then hammered in the rock. lots of little spoonfuls of milkshake. So done with this
Where’s the frustrated emoji? What a mess.
It was the best thing to happen. Now I am officially cured. I am healed my brothers! I will come play in the dirt * On dry nice days only* from now on.
Looks more like a sewer treatment plant with all little water compartments, than a building foundation. We pushed some crane pads in the last two days at both jobs, but neither job looked as bad as yours
Really sucks by looks of it.
You may have mentioned this and I missed it. What is your/your company's role in this project? You mention the dirt crew so presumably you do something more specialized?
I had finished the cell beyond me and tracked over where I could jump the stemwall between bolts. That is how it is all over. I'll dig your trenches for ya OK. Just float your pipe in my track puddles.
Plumbers.
When a feller finally decides he has had enough the relief is palpable, AND liberating. I am 5 years retired. When I think back on it, I can't help but laugh at the poor bastards with years to go. As did those men that cleaned out their bay so I could move in
I did the bus to ferry to bus shuffle to the south sound, and met with my boss to look at a job. During that drive, the Union Dispatcher called and we spoke about a couple of candidates for my replacement. He called again while we were still together and he had a couple of names and numbers. It is really happening! Fingers crossed I can hand over the keys next week or so.
Will NOT EVER regret it, may miss it some but regret will not happen.
the tide is in. mini wants water wings please.
I've never looked back. I hope it works out as well for you
Mini Asking for Bath?
That job needs to be shut down until they dry it out. At least somewhat
I spoke to two guys and will be meeting with one on Tuesday. Looking good to be done with this next week.
Do they ever put tarps over the site and use heaters to dry it up? You can't do anything when it's that wet.
nah. pump the water slick it off, add a bit of rock. Get er done. I've seen lots of capillary break rock go over some soft stuff. Next thing you know the concrete is poured.
Around here if you were going to tarp everything off when it rained you'd spend more time messing with them than actually working from October to May.
I did possibly the last digging for the company today. I still have not told my friend and ground guy the news. The replacement may fall through yet. I meet with him tomorrow and turn in the 1 Ton GMC. The boss can choose to send it home with him, or keep it at the yard.
Is always hard to make the first steps away from a life we made as workers. Once taken it becomes easier with each passing step.
I am so over that, Dave. My brother had a 4 hour back fusion surgery yesterday. He will come home in a few days from the hospital, and now I am free to go give him a hand and not have a care about that job. My beetle is what they call a U14 in the Washington Ferry business, and only a motorcycle has a lower fare for it. It takes about 2 hours to get there and 25 of that is relaxing on the boat.
I'm surprised you haven't told your friend much sooner. I'm sure it will be a tough conversation.
he knows it is coming. He has helped me plumbing the new house. My filter has been broken and he laughs about it. I will miss that part of the job for certain but I have started exploring the new community, I went to the monthly pancake feed at the Grange hall and met new folks just Sunday.
Sam was cool on the phone today. " I would have bailed a year ago" was his response New guy seems promising, and I will show him the equipment, the job, the work, and introduce him to the crew tomorrow, then hop a bus back to the new house project. It is in the general direction of " Off into the Sunset" LOL
you will be checking in here some????
Oh yeah. I spot things on my drive to share. Today It was a Link Belt 370 log shovel on a lowboy, and also an amazing collection of new model excavators that have been sitting at an interchange job for months now. The king of the fleet is a new John Deere 870, there is a new CAT 352 and a fairly fresh Komatsu 490 doing nothing at all. Must be nice to stand that kind of overhead, at least 2 million in excavator iron just sitting.
back in March of 2024 I posted this picture, flying christmas trees for the ironworkers at the new Mary Bridge Children's hospital. Today: I am down here to see my wife at TG. She was on the phone with me as safety person while I worked on the roof 100 miles away at the new house, and tripped and broke her acetabulum (hip socket.) I had her bestie come over who was only minutes away. That was Sunday afternoon, and she is still waiting for surgery. It is about a 3 hour procedure to do an external fixation of the acetabulum, followed by 3 days inpatient care. The procedure is an order of magnitude more invasive and complicated than a hip replacement, which are typically day surgeries. Life can turn on a dime.
Another need for a sad face emoji. So sorry for calamity. Probably very painful.
oh yeah very. It was hard to hear her pain I was so lucky her bestie is about 7 minutes away.
Sorry to hear this Skyking. Hope she gets the procedure quickly and has a successful recovery. Cam
I spoke to the surgeon, she is in recovery and probably an hour from getting back to her room. I am getting some dinner now. It is as I figured, he confirmed 3 days inpatient recovery and I think a coin toss on going to rehab.
That is heartbreaking to hear. Glad they could perform surgery and hope she makes a full recovery. I'm glad someone was nearby when I got debilitating back pain. I could barely move. It sure didn't help when I was mis-diagnosed 3 times. Sounds wrong but I was somewhat relieved to hear I had a form of cancer. At least I knew what was causing the pain. I was very grateful it's a treatable cancer. Wish I has more energy though.
3 days inpatient tells the tale, must be pretty involved. They don't like to keep anyone overnight anymore. Best wishes on her speedy recovery.
Wishing her well..
Thanks guys. The PA that was in the surgery brought up the x-rays. She has a half dozen screws. One of them is 4 in long! I took some pictures.
Yikes! I knew a guy that broke both femurs at the same time and had rods in legs. He had copies of the x-rays. I went to see him in the hospital and 2 nurses were putting him a wheel chair. One of the nurses didn't lock the leg support and when she lifted his leg to put it on the support it dropped when she let go of his leg. He certainly wasn't amazed and let her know it. I could tell it must have hurt like hell! On top of that they gave him outdated blood. He recovered but sadly got pancreatic cancer several years later.
There's stories here of people waiting in the ER for hours and hours before getting looked at. Even dying because they didn't get treatment. Instead of cuts to Medicare it should be a priority. It's great it's free but instead of wasting money on useless crap give some money so we can get more Dr's.
she is back home today. I installed 4 grab bars in the bathroom, and installed a Toto washlet bidet on that toilet. I picked up a wheelchair for her Saturday. She can only bear 30 pounds on that hip, and her arthritis won't allow any extensive walker usage.
My NCCCO crane certifications expire at the end of November. I can get the union to pay for renewal if I keep paying dues until I take the tests. Now they require the long version of the tests, rather than a renewal set of questions. There it is. Renew the medical one more time, jump through the crane hoops just in case I get a call to do a fun gig? Or just step back and focus on the new retirement gig? It is a little difficult to just let it fall on the floor.
I vote Renew.
It's a big deal for a guy that has busted his ass since puberty. When I saw that gig coming up for me, the drop in daily stress level made it an easy choice. The money gig will be less stress than the work gig.
Skyking, I would keep the certs up for at least a yr. As you have already experienced, things can change in an instant. My retirement was not as I expected (covid) and I wish that I kept the work options on the table but I closed that door a little too firmly when I left.
I did a little job that has been about 9 months in waiting at a government facility. Had to dig 48" to get 42" cover on the 6" ducts, which carry hot and cold PEX lines to an outdoor washdown and eye wash station. We dug it yesterday and drug that pipe in there and under the curb and conduit today. I "volunteered" the boss to come help with that awkward stuff. That building houses a pair of nice 800KW Cummins backup generators. I can take a picture of the tag and CPL if someone is curious. They are advertised 1220 Hp.
Flunking retirement, eh?
recidivism It is a problem for many.
Been there Done That!!