Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

The job on which we've been working this week produced concrete results.

( And a lot of sore muscles )

That's roughly 1/3 of a metric ton of concrete we mixed, poured, and finished over the past two days. Both Lisa and I are rather sore in the shoulders and back today. But it's a good job done, and I reckon that nothing short of a tornado will remove the shed she intends to build and bolt to this foundation when she gets done with it.

For New Year's Eve, we stayed home. The most adventurous thing I did was to go bowling after breakfast on Half Price Sunday Morning at the local lanes. Lisa and I did do some additional work on the carport roof, as Lisa has fashioned some brackets to try and cut down on vibration on windy days (of which we have quite a few here). Today was a relatively balmy 11°C with little wind, so we got out the ladder and she started attaching brackets. (I'll have more to say about this when I get back to the Building the Carport series of posts.) Because of the time spent on the carport, we have not yet started unloading the pallet of fire logs we bought from Big R yesterday after we got back from Reno. We're not out of usable firewood just yet, although I've nearly finished off the last of the cordwood that we bought last year and that is stored on the "dog run" out back.

When we went to the grocery store to pick up a few things, the clerk asked if we were going out for some sort of New Year's Eve celebration. We said we were not. Having spent the last week running back and forth to Reno nearly every day fussing with the washing machine has left us a bit worn out. An early draft of our plans for this long holiday weekend had us going on a mini-vacation somewhere in northern Nevada, but we called it off and stayed home instead. That's a vacation of a sort.

With the roof peak pieces finished, we could use the test rig to get the spacing right for the two base rails of the carport. This meant it was time to start pouring more concrete and drilling holes in concrete, depending on the specific anchorages.

( A Firm Foundation )

Lisa was very concerned that this structure not blow over in the wind storms we get here. With both concrete bolts drilled into the pad and additional concrete post holes holding it down, we reckon that nothing short of a tornado is going to budge this thing.

The carport structure consists of seven vertical frames with six longitudinal members to which the sheet metal roof panels attach. The next step of the process was to start assembling the roof peaks.

( Peak Assembly )

Next: Time to start pouring concrete and leaning about how to use a hammer drill as we secure the base rails.

Before we could start assembling the carport frame, we had to have the widened concrete pad onto which the base rails of the building would sit. I detailed the pouring of a lot of concrete to do the necessary widening last year in a series of posts starting here. Not only did this give us the proper base, but it also taught us how to mix and pour concrete, which we would need to do when we started to anchor the base to the ground later.

Although we don't get a lot of rain here (<5 inches/year), we do get some, and the roof on the travel trailer appears to be leaking. As a temporary measure, at lunch today we ran down to Big R and got a 50-foot roll of 12-foot-wide plastic sheeting. While I worked at Day Jobbe this afternoon, Lisa worked on wrapping the roof of the trailer and tying it into place. As sunset neared, I went out and helped a little bit. I climbed up to the second floor balcony to take a photo of her work.

( Forgive the Angle )

How this will fare in our (pretty common) high winds we do not yet know. However, this is only a temporary measure to simply keep rain off the roof. We're working on a project to get a permanent shelter in place here, but it probably won't happen until next spring when the weather warms up enough to where we can lay more concrete, since you shouldn't pour concrete in below-freezing weather.

It was about 5°C cooler today, which make it a bit easier on us mixing and pouring the third segment (of five) on the carport-widening project. We learned lessons from yesterday. We didn't have the concrete quite as wet as we should have done, which made finishing yesterday very difficult, and with a bit of a breeze today, we would need to add more water to the mix without making it too soupy. I also learned that my broad-brimmed hat was not enough to keep the sun off, as I got some sunburn yesterday. I vowed to keep that from happening today no matter how silly I looked.

( And I Did Look Funny, I Admit )

There are two segments left, and we think we have enough concrete mix left, but it's going to be close. Our original plans to try and get two segments done in a day are now officially abandoned. While it's supposed to start raining on Thursday night/Friday morning, we should be done with the carport widening by the end of the day Wednesday.

After we finished the pour, it took a while before we were recovered, and then we went to Reno/Sparks to try and get some grocery shopping done. We got some of it done, but not all of it. We'll probably have to go back in another evening this week to refill the larder with things we can't get in Fernley.

Now we can reveal the actual purpose of the 1.5 tons of Quick-Crete® we bought back in August when it was on a good sale: we're widening the concrete carport slab on which the travel trailer is parked. The existing slab has always been narrower than we liked, so we are widening it by about 30 cm.

During my last two trips to the Bay Area, Lisa has been excavating a trench approximately 30 cm wide by 10 m long by 10-15 cm deep. This past week while I've been working from home, Lisa has been building wooden forms including cross-pieces that break the trench into five segments. The plan is for us to pour a segment, wait for it to sufficiently set, remove the form holding one end, insert a piece of cardboard to separate the segments, then pour the next segment. The cardboard spacers will eventually rot away, but we figure the spaces between the segments will fill with dirt on their own, or else we can fill them with one of the various sealants out there.

Yesterday I helped Lisa secure the cross pieces, which are held in place with wood screws for easy removal. This morning, I kitted up in my coveralls and moved five wheelbarrow-loads of firewood from the Mountain of Wood that was dumped too far toward the street. After that, Lisa and I went to Big R to get a few more tools, including a new garden hose (the old one has a hole in it; darn mice!) and a spray nozzle, some heavy nitrile gloves, and a garden watering can, which is useful for adding more water to the concrete in small amounts while keeping down the concrete dust. After lunch, it was time to start pouring.

( Getting Into the Mix )

I've been using a flat scraper to mix the concrete, and it's hard work. After dinner tonight, we went to Lowe's and bought a mortar hoe, which is a hoe with holes in it to make it more suitable for mixing small-batch concrete like this. I hope it will make the mixing a little bit easier.

The spray nozzle made cleaning up relatively easy. You of course have to wash up fairly quickly, since the concrete does start to set pretty quickly, and you don't want a bunch of dried concrete caking up your tools and wheelbarrow. I'm doing the washout in an area where we don't really care if we end up with some bits of sort-of concrete.

This is tiring work. It's a pity that there's no place to rent a concrete mixer in Fernley. We could buy a small mixer locally, but it only does about the same amount as a wheelbarrow load, and then you'd have to find somewhere to keep it when you were done with it. With two pours down and four to go, I reckon we can get it done in the next few days even if we only manage to do one pour per day. With luck, we may get two pours done in a day, allowing time between pours for the first of the two to set sufficiently.