The Excavator arrives and gets to work.
Day Thirty-Four, 09 November, 2015
Excavator, Track Hoe, Big-Ass Piece of Equipment, whatever you want to call it. Should be here Monday, around 10:00 AM or so. And so it was. It arrived about 10:30, give or take a few minutes.
It was mounted side-saddle on the low-boy trailer so they just had to drive it off the trailer and through the gates with plenty of room to spare.
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| Trummer's Machine Arriving |
Here it comes through our trees. Kind of cool how low it can tuck itself to get through. Not bad for basically a huge machine.
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| Ducking Down Below the Trees |
Arriving at the actual place where the work needs to be done. It's first order of business is to move as much of a pile of sand that was in its way as possible.
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| At Last - Into the Work Area |
First off, un-tucking itself, it stretched, and then got righ to work.
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| Stretching It's Arm - Ready To Go |
A couple of scoops of sand and this pile was no longer a problem.
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| Gotta Move the Sand Pile |
I thought you might like to see the nuts and bolts that actually anchor the trusses to the chain.
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| Some of the Nuts, Bols, and Washers to Hold the Trusses On |
Now's the fun part. The machine picks up the first truss and begins to swing it around and move it up to the north end of the roof.
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| Hoisting the Fierst One - the North Gable End |
Up and over. Gently does it. The guys are keeping it under control with lines on either end as the Track Hoe moves it along to its final position.
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| Up and Over As It Goes |
Omar's directing its placement on the end. It will still need some final tweaking and adjusting.
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| Omar Wants It Right Here |
Everybody gets into the act. This first one was the hardest. The boom hadn't gotten to the site yet, so there was barely enough room for the Excavator to maneuver the truss. It was tough for the guys to move it too. Each of the gable end trusses weigh about 1,500 pounds, or so. All of the truss lumber is bullet-tree wood, an extremely dense and heavy wood, that can effectively only be cut and drilled while it's still green. All the truss lumber for this project weighed in the vicinity of six and three-quarter tons. Magnificent, heavy stuff. Virtually termite-proof because of the density.
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| A Little This Way |
Here's a shot showing the blocks that had to be trimmed so that the end gable on the north end would seat just so. This had to be done, as this is where the two structures, the existing pool house and the new construction actually come together. Wasn't necesary for it to be done on the other end.
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| The Angle Fits Perfectly |
Now, with the boom in place, moving the trusses is significantly easier, and since most of them aren't gable end pieces, they're quite a bit lighter and more easily maneuvered into place.
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| Picking Up the Third One |
From the inside, you can see progress is coming fast. Once the boom got here, the process moved right along. The machine was only here a little over three hours, much faster than we had initially estimated.
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| Adjusting Another One |
Just a shot to show you the cubby above the closet that will also be where the access hatch to the attic will be located.
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| Future Site of Attic Access Hatch |
In addition to bolting each truss to the anchor points, they are joined by wood pieces temporarily until the furring strips can be added prepatory to the roofing zinc being added.
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| Joining Them Together With Wood Pieces |
The last truss is in position and being fastened into place. Not as hard as we thought it might be.
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| The Last Truss Going Up |
Carl had to use a couple of wood pieces to push the center of the last truss into place until weight could be applied to the truss.
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| Bracing With A Couple of Boards |
Once that was done, we had one last chore for the machine - dig the septic tank hole. Since we're going to use a Rotoplas plastic septic tank, a deep hole, relatively small diameter had to be dug within the confines of the steel markers.
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| Marks Where the Septic Tank Will Go |
The first push into the ground. That lets you know just how powerful this machine is. That marl is as hard as concrete, but seemed like butter to the machine.
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| Starting to Dig the Septic Tank Hole |
The machine's operator, is really an artist with that thing. Notice how close he's come to the markers.
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| Fine Precision Work |
After about ten minutes work it was all done.
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| Finished Septic Tank Hole |
About that time, after the danger of falling debris, etc., had passed, Dianna thought she would come down and inspect how things have gone.
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| Dianna Inspecting the Work |
Altogether, a short day's work for the crew. Hot but short. There's a ton more photos of this phase of the project. See the next paragraph to access them.
There's many more photos than appear in each posting. You can see all
the photos of the construction project on Flickr at:
https://www.flickr.com/gp/winjama/0wVc3s. There will be new photos added
each day of the project.
