Concrete
| THEN we hit our first snag- we knew we'd probably run into the 200A electric service line into the house... and we did. At the far end of the pit, it's about 3' over the footing... and at this end, it's 3' under the footing... This meant that we had to move the electrical service to the house before we could pour the walls...! |  |
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OH well. To keep the project moving while we got the service moved, we hired Jimco Forms of Chelmsford to do our concrete work. Here we are, ready to pour the footings |
| The standard footings are 20" wide and at least 8" thick. |  |
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On 12-nov-02, the concrete truck shows up...handy that the concrete truck can just drive across the lawn! |
| TWO days later, after a good rain, our footings are ready to rock- but we were blocked on the electric service. In order to re-rout the service line, we had to move the meter. |  |
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Technically, this is straight forward- you build a temporary pedestal to hold the meter ("billboard" on the left); then running the service across the 4 x 4 support and back into the house. However... the power company (NStar) gets involved- they dictate where the meter goes. They also do the service disconnect / reconnect (a 2 minute job) but it took them 2 weeks to do that for us...! |
| AS soon as the electrics got moved, we could pour the walls. Jimco formed and poured the walls on Monday, 2-dec-02. |  |
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That was terrific, except that the temperature dropped to 9 degrees that night..! We ended up filling the top of the forms with hay to insulate and getting vinyl tarps to cover it all up..! Two days later we stripped the forms and George painted all the walls... and here's what we had! |