Sunday, October 3, 2010

Plastic pipe, plastic sheets, plastic lumber...

Do you sense a theme? The weather didn't quite hold off, but we have a very productive weekend in spite of it.

I had plans for this weekend, and I knew we would need extra hands for the work I was thinking of. I talked to Kevin, and he said he was available on Saturday. So mom, dad and I headed up to the property fairly early on Saturday. The weather predictions kept increasing the likelihood of rain for Saturday. I was hoping it would hold off. We got there, and it was a beautiful sky, with hardly a cloud. However, I knew there was a whole line of storms headed our way. Since the weather was holding, and the trenches were fairly dry, and we would have Kevin's help, I decided that the first thing to tackle, was trying to get some of the lines laid in the trenches.

My dad and I started to lay the pieces out for the conduit that will carry the lines to the well. As we started to lay the conduit out, I realized that once we got the conduit in place, is was going to hamper efforts to put the drainage layer up on the back wall. So we set the conduit aside, and started to work with the drainage materials. About this time, Kevin showed up. He helped hold the material, while dad and I got it unrolled against the wall. After we had it leaning up against the wall, Kevin and dad, held it in place, while I attached it to the wall. Once that was done, we worked on getting the conduit for the well put in. We had to dig out more dirt in the trench to get the conduit to line up between the trench and the pipe coming out of the wall. It took a while, but we got it put together.

Then, we worked on getting the conduit started for the communications lines. This conduit will carry wires back to where I am going to have my antenna tower. It is going to run out through the well trench, and then go on a ways further to get to where the antenna tower will be. The pipe coming out of the wall for this is a few feet away from the well pipe, so we had to bring it over to where it would be able to head into the well trench without difficulty. We were making good progress on this line, when the rain moved in. I knew that it wouldn't take that much for the trenches to become an awful muddy mess, and I didn't want any of us to get cold from the rain, or the dropping temperature. So I called an end to that endeavor, and we moved to working on the overhang.

Here are the conduits we worked on.

The rain wasn't heavy, and was falling mostly straight down, so we worked on the overhang, where we could stay mostly out of the rain, but still get work on the outside of the house done. I wanted a waterproof layer under the siding. So we attached some tape to one edge of some plastic sheeting, and used a staple gun, to temporarily attach it across the front of the house. I had fabricated furring boards to go across the top of the wall, but we needed something to hold the plastic sheeting in place while we attached the furring boards. With the plastic secured, Kevin and dad held the furring boards up in position, while I drove screws through the furring, and the plastic and into the studs in the Nudura blocks. That went quite well. We definitely needed a third set of hands for that work, and since there was very little wind, it was an excellent opportunity to get that all up. My dad and I continued to work for a while, and we got some of the trim boards in place at the bottom of the wall. This would hold the plastic sheet in place, until we could get more of the furring done.

This is how we left it Saturday evening.

Today, I headed out early to get more boards cut, and drilled, so that when dad and mom were able make it out, we could get a number of boards on the wall, in a short amount of time. We finished putting the trim boards at the bottom of the wall, and we got furring boards put around the door.

Plastic sheeting well secured.

Next, we turned to battle our nemesis, the Evil Overhang! Friday night I had worked on getting the holes drilled, and tee nuts put in, for a third bolt. This provides for more support of the boards. We also had modified our plans on how the foam boards should be positioned, so that they could be installed easier. We made some adjustments to the first board, and put it in place. Then we made sure it was as level as we could get it, and secured the bolts to the joists. the next board, was trickier. It had a corner cut to go around some of the furring, and it had a hole for one of the vent pipes. It was difficult to get all the pieces to cooperate and go into place. But we manage to maneuver them where they needed to be. We thought about it some more, and made some further adjustments to the process, when we put up the third board and foam piece.

Its a start.

It now looks like we have a system that will let us work faster, and with fewer headaches. So hopefully tomorrow night and Wednesday night, we will be able to attach a majority of the foam on the underside of the overhang.

No comments:

Post a Comment