Delivery Made and Construction Thoughts

Most of the windows arrived before Christmas.  As you can see, they filled up one of the bays of our window barn.  Now, our tractor, being displaced, is homeless for awhile.  A big thanks to Junius, Peter, Steve, Fred, and Kris and his helper from Nature Neutral in Charlottsville, VA.

We have been mulling over how to 'reinforce' the I-beams for supporting the second floor. They require gluing and screwing.  That requires a warm 55 degree environment for at least 24 hours.  One of the current thoughts is to finish the garage and put them in there and heat that area; and for the I-beams that are longer than the garage, we would create a plastic building extension that would retain some of the heat. We only need to work on one end at a time of those longer I-beams.  The shorter beams only need the reinforcement on one end. 

Framing of the Garage Wall - Finished

You can see some of the rebar (horizontal and vertical) along with the back of the garage wall.

From the inside looking out

Manuel, Bruce and Felix arrived with Vincent on Monday, and completed the framing without any problems on Wednesday.  Perhaps a few questions, but no problems - and the questions were answered.  They even capped it off with a Keystone.

Starting to Make Progress Once Again!

Keith has joined Bill, and, for a week, they addressed erosion problems, and finished the first layer of horizonal rebar on the garage and started the vertical layer of rebar. 

Square gray grate in center of picture is the drain.  The house is just to the right, out of the picture. The black and white 'snake' on the left is the corrugated pipe.

Yesterday, Bill and Keith made a drain, lined in brick. So, instead of the water washing down the hill, it should collect in the drain and go down the half-buried 4" corrugated pipe and come out near the bottom of the hill. 

BEFORE

 

AFTER

And, also yesterday, Wayne the Welder did a wonderful welding job on "the beam that was too short."

The lumber to build the garage wall was delivered Friday and this week, IT WILL BE BUILT.  With the welding done, some of the panels can be put on the house, along with rebar. We still need to hear from the engineers about the support for the 2nd floor.  That should be very soon now.