Posts Tagged ‘contractors’
Sail Up
The next milestone on the shade sail project has been achieved; the sail is up in the small paddock, hanging from 4 new posts. We aren’t finished with the project yet, as there are currently extra braces in place, and we plan to add some 45° angled supports to the header boards and then cut off the extra length of each header. At that time, we may also trim away the extra post height at the top of the two posts where the sail attaches at a lower point.
Leaving all the extra lengths is just a precautionary decision in case we decide we want to make adjustments to the geometry for any reason. We are leaving the temporary supports in place to allow time for all the earth we dug up to settle around each post.
At first, the holes appeared to be dry at the bottom, but we soon saw water flowing into them. More evidence to Cyndie and me that either the water table is pretty high here or we have a natural spring in the vicinity, about 3 or 4 feet below the surface.
The goop coming out of the holes was like the vintage 1960s playset, “Silly Sand.” That made it a challenge to get the holes as deep as we wanted.
We even tried a sump pump to remove standing water, just long enough to establish a base of concrete blocks and gravel fill. Pumping was only moderately successful.
When all four posts were vertical and Justin got the eyebolts in place, it was time to retrieve the sail from the barn.
I just unhooked one corner at a time and said, “Cyndie, hold this,” for each one. Soon, she had the entire sail in her arms.
Even though there was a slight wind to contend with, the outdoor connections weren’t troublesome to make at all.
A shout-out to the heroes who contributed greatly to my attempt to bring this vision in my head into reality:
- My son, Julian, for his technical expertise in creating a virtual sail for me to play with and see how the shadow would move as the sun crosses the sky.
- Architect (mostly retired), Mike Wilkus, for his willingness to listen to me describe my thinking and offer counsel on possibilities.
- New online connection and friend, Emily Pratt Slatin, for her engineering insights from her career in the Fire Department, dealing with equipment tolerances and code enforcement.
- Contractor, Justin Schneider of HomeWorks Consulting, LLC, for the hands-on skills, tools, knowledge, and experience I lack in this otherwise DIY project.
We are relying on the header boards to counter the pull that the tightening of the sail will apply to the posts. It will clutter the super cool visual of the hyperbolic parabola of the sail, but I chose to angle the boards to offer support to that twisting look. If I change my mind after a few days of looking at the structure, there is still an option to square up the header boards around the top and leave a clean visual of the sail geometry below them.
It was a really long day in the hot sun, which made it all the sweeter when the sail went up, providing some very welcome, precious shade. I think the horses are going to find this to be a very nice addition to their living quarters.
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Morning Shadows
Yesterday’s sunrise was fun to watch through the windows overlooking the lake, but it was the golden light hitting the walls inside and the shadows cast that triggered me to pull out my phone camera to capture images.
Day two of my assignment at the lake was even easier than the one before. Our contractor, Brad, didn’t take me up on an offer to help lift or carry anything, so it was another day filled with reading, writing, puzzling, sweeping a dusting of snow off the steps, streaming movies and TV shows, and finding ways to somehow make a respectable dent in all the food Cyndie sent up with me.
I looked up from my puzzle and spotted Brad loading a tall, old gas wall heater into his truck he’d uninstalled from Cabin 3. I have no idea how he got it off the wall and down all the stairs by himself. A short while later, he was hoisting the old gas range and oven onto his tailgate that he’d wheeled down on a two-wheel dolly hand truck. He is a very independent worker.
We are done dealing with the smell of micro-leaks of propane from the vintage appliances with no plan to replace them. (I apologize in advance to Thomas, who must cringe at the thought upon reading that sentence.) The small cabin isn’t winterized, and no cooking ever happens there these days. It makes a great overflow space for sleeping in the summer with multiple beds, a full bathroom, a refrigerator, and a kitchen sink.
Don’t know if I’m heading home this afternoon or tomorrow. I won’t complain if I get to stay one more day.
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Fair Exchange
I have been given a chance for a mini-vacation for a few days this week in an advance payment for holding down the ranch solo next week when Cyndie takes a trip to visit friends. Cyndie arranged for a local contractor at our lake place in Hayward to do some work inside the main house and wanted to have someone here to let him in and be around while he worked in case he needed anything.
Her solution was brilliant, as far as I’m concerned. She offered me the chance to come up alone, and I accepted without hesitation. A solo road trip! Yahoo!
Not that I was excited or anything, but I packed the night before and snuck out the door at 5 a.m. yesterday for the drive to the lake. It felt reminiscent of my time commuting to the day job, except it took another hour and a half longer to get here than it did heading to the old workplace.
There had been just enough snow (you know, “nuisance snow” amounts) that I did a fair amount of shoveling to clean up walkways and stairs to both buildings for Brad, the contractor. He will also be doing some work for us in the little cabin while waiting for the sheetrock mud to dry.
Old seals on the hoses to the washing machine in the laundry room leaked when nobody was aware of it, and the resulting water damage included moldy sheetrock.
I took a picture while he was dismantling some shelving to show the yucky wall. After helping carry the frame and countertops out of the way, I gave Brad some space and listened to construction sounds from a distance.
With all obstructions out of the way, he made short work of ripping out the old and installing the new.
While Brad was doing real work, I enjoyed a leisurely day free of any animal duties and listened to my music library at high volume, set up a jigsaw puzzle, did some reading, took a nap, ate like a king (of course, Cyndie sent me off with oodles of good food!), and watched shows on Netflix that Cyndie won’t tolerate.
The hardest part of my day was learning that after a full day of the waterer in the paddock working fine and the temperatures moderating a bit from the most bitter cold, the line still froze again yesterday afternoon. Aaarrgh! Cyndie was able to melt it again and has the installer coming today, hopefully, to check out whether one of the heat tapes needs to be replaced.
I feel bad that the problem continued into her solo watch. One way to look at it though, maybe the added stress yesterday could help her to appreciate even more her vacation from animal responsibilities next week.
Giving each other separate turns to have an extended break from daily chores is a fair exchange. Right now, I’m soaking up my brief autonomy opportunity at the lake with maximum appreciation.
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Crown Complete
You know what else feels lovely? Having a long-awaited project completed. We’ve known for a few years that the crown on top of our chimney was compromised, the cement cracked and allowing water penetration when it rains and snows. The kind of issue that was invisible to us on the ground and could have lingered unknown for a long time before it emerged as very costly structural damage to the whole chimney.
During a regular chimney cleaning appointment, we were informed the crown was aging poorly. That chimney sweep told us he fabricates metal crowns that can be placed directly over the existing cement.
Sounded good to me in my total niaveté. Sign me up! Of course, this happened in the fall, and the guy said he was way behind on making these custom chimney caps, so he could not predict when he would get to us.
After about a year of waiting with the nagging concern that water was seeping in with each bout of precipitation, I called to see what his schedule looked like.
He ghosted me. ‘Nuff said. We asked for an assessment from a more reputable company this fall, and now the problem is solved.
It is quickly obvious when you have landed a contractor who knows what he is doing. One who efficiently solves complexities and quickly achieves good results.
I never noticed that the old crown didn’t look all that impressive until the unveiling of the new one. With fabrication complete, they spent a few hours sealing the new cement and then continued all the way down to the bottom, covering the stones and masonry with a fresh coat of sealant for protection against the elements.
I love that we have one less concern in our ongoing quest to protect our place from water damage.
Looking at the weather forecast for the next few days, I happily say, “Let it rain and snow!”
We’ll build a nice warm fire and watch the precipitation with one less worry.
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Crown Replacement
The latest, and hopefully last, home improvement project of the fall is a replacement of the concrete crown on our chimney. The structure is 34 years old and was cracking and headed for increasingly problematic water penetration. On Friday, work began in earnest, beginning with the demolition of the old crown.
Just because it was starting to crack in places didn’t mean it was going to simply fall apart in Jason, the contractor’s hands, after a few blows from his heavy-duty hammer. The old masonry put up a fight that forced him to spend twice the time he expected the demo to take.
Watching his partner, Charlie, muscle the massive chunks down three ladders over and over again made my muscles ache in sympathy. Especially knowing he is going to need to muscle buckets of new cement up three ladders over and over again when they pour the new crown.
Luckily, he gets the weekend between each phase.
From a safe vantage point on the ground, I watched them work up there and several times felt my nerves wobble as they moved around in awkward positions with awkward loads or wielding power tools with dangly power cords.
As they cut into the point where stones end, and concrete began, the dust blew into the air, looking like smoke coming out the top.
When Jason finally arrived last Wednesday, several weeks after it was hinted they could fit us into the schedule, he was alone and warned he would probably only be able to complete initial preparations. His partner was out unexpectedly that day due to a death in the family.
The next day, Thursday, would be unavailable because of doctor appointments. I had told the company that Wednesday was a good start because we had company coming over the weekend, hoping they would be done by then.
What can ya do? On Friday morning, Jason checked one last time before showing up to ask whether I wanted them to wait until Monday to start making a mess of things since we had people coming for a visit.
“No!”
I didn’t want any more delays, and the weather was supposed to be perfect, and it was just Cyndie’s brother bringing his new “friend” and her kids to see the place for the first time, and it would be no big deal if the place looked under construction. Get ‘er done.
The original plan was to break up the old crown in the morning and pour the new crown in the afternoon, but that isn’t the way things worked out. After they got the old crown removed, they needed to do some additional grinding of the stones around the top to create a flat surface to secure the framing for the new pour.
It’s very satisfying to see that every aspect of this project is beyond my DIY capabilities. It makes the not-insignificant expense easier to accept.
In the end, it will probably be similar to the cost of a new crown from a dentist, which is a steal because these guys are installing a crown in the equivalent environs of a circus high-wire act.
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Reality Returns
We now return you to regularly scheduled programming. While reliving the wonders of our time in Iceland and recovering from post-travel illnesses, real life has resumed with a landscape update project around the front of our house.
We had to wait all summer for my favorite concrete lifting company to fit us into their schedule, which put our re-landscaping of the front walkway on hold. As soon as they finished their work, Cyndie and I dug into finishing what we could of the project while coughing our lungs out.
With the concrete slabs returned to their original level with a positive slope away from the foundation, we added some gravel and set about replacing the stone slabs of the rustic entry walkway that won us over when we bought the place.
The finishing touch of a fresh fill of new river rock is awaiting another contractor who happily promises but fails to act in a timely fashion. We are relying on our patience to maintain that relationship with a guy who has helped us many times over the years. He eventually gets around to showing up.
I am feeling back to my old self and am surprised that my lungs seem back to usual (which has never been that great) faster than expected after pneumonia.
This weekend, I am home alone with the animals while Cyndie is with friends up at the lake. The horses are doing great. Asher is whining at me incessantly.
Yes, reality has returned in all its glory.
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Missing Phase
So, yesterday I wrote about the stability I have enjoyed throughout my life. That would include infrastructure, which isn’t exactly what I was referring to in my rambling sermon. When it snows, our roads get plowed. When I turn on the faucet, water comes out. When I toggle a switch, the lights come on. Except when they don’t.
My current perception of stability was rocked on Tuesday when I flipped the two switches for lights in the barn and only one set came on. I’ve seen incidences where a circuit breaker fails. That would be easy for me to fix.
It’s not the circuit breaker. It is something I cannot fix. One of the phases of 120V AC coming into the master circuit breaker in the electrical box in the barn is no longer live. Zero voltage.
Since the source of this power is after or beyond our electric co-op’s meter, they do not provide service. That falls on their members to contact an electrician for help. The person I spoke with at the co-op was as helpful as possible in providing information to aid me in deciding what to do next.
The most unsettling thing I learned was that burrowing critters do indeed contribute to underground electrical line failures. He said that when cable insulation gets chewed to expose conductors, the wires can begin to corrode and eventually even turn to dust.
As a result of that, he told me the co-op now runs wires through piping between transformers and homes when doing new installations. Doing so has significantly reduced these kinds of problems.
Lovely.
What are our chances of finding an electrician who happens to have time to just show up when we call?
Well, pretty good, actually. The first company I contacted said “Joe” would call me back as soon as he had a moment. Based on previous experience, I fought my fears that I wouldn’t hear from him for days, if at all.
Cyndie encouraged me to send him love in advance. I sent the whole company love.
An hour or two later, I got the call and he immediately asked if it was a dairy barn and whether it was urgent, or not. When I admitted it wasn’t urgent but we did have horses and the power keeps their water from freezing, he said they would come out first thing in the morning.
We couldn’t be more pleased about that.
Does it work if we send the underground electric cable love?
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Mad Skills
I can’t swear that crossing our fingers brought the desired result, but we got what we wished. First, they started delivering truckloads of dirt. They came from the right.
They came from the left.
Then they started spreading the dirt so they could bring more loads.
The skid-steer driver employed mad skills, rapidly maneuvering forward and back while moving the bucket with a surprisingly light touch to tap, grade, scoop, and scrape dirt into submission. The knowledge and abilities he demonstrated served to emphatically confirm our belief that hiring professionals for this work would be smarter than trying to somehow do it ourselves
Even if I was able to rent a skid steer and learn how to operate it, I could never come close to achieving what this guy did.
In order to get it all done in one day, he did leave a fair amount of finishing work for us to do ourselves but I’m okay with that. In one afternoon he brought us a heck of a lot closer to the goal we have in mind.
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The driveway is a mess and there are a fair number of big rocks we need to pick up. It will be a challenge to turn all that new dirt into a carpet of healthy grass blades. But the problem of that sharp drop-off has been remedied and is now behind us. We are happy to be able to move on to making everything look nice.
We can start on that after Labor Day weekend. We are heading to the lake today. The dirt will still be here when we return.
Just when I thought the last load of dirt had been delivered, the decision was made to fix the ruts in the drainage swale by simply adding dirt where it was most needed.
They felt it was the least disruptive and the rest of the swale didn’t warrant being dug up to gain so little improvement. I was not about to argue with that logic.
I’m going to cross my fingers for luck that we can turn all that dirt into grass blades (and NOT weeds) swiftly and successfully. Look at me dreaming big!
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Fingers Crossed
What are the odds that our favorite excavating company will actually show up today with a load of black dirt, a skid-steer, and years of know-how to professionally finish the shoulders of our driveway? It’s only been more than a year of waiting since they agreed to help us. When I checked (for the umpteenth time) on Monday and was told it would happen on Wednesday, I assumed he meant next week.
He corrected me and said this week! I wasn’t going to argue. I played along like I fully believed him. Pardon my skepticism.
Still, I have taken steps of preparation in case today really will be the day. A couple of weeks ago, I tried enticing the scheduler with an invitation to do even more work than just the driveway, hoping a bigger job would make the trip worth more to them.
It is time to reshape the drainage swale that passes through both the hay field and the back pasture on the way to moving water off the property toward the closest river. Yesterday I mowed the area to provide a better view of the current topography and, most importantly, to clearly indicate the direct route I want shaped up for the most effective flow.
Looking up to the culvert that brings water under the driveway:
Looking down at the route across the back pasture:
They actually did this for me about ten years ago when I was hoping to permanently establish a well-defined, wide, slow-flowing grassy swale. How naive of me to think any waterway could be permanently shaped. In the years since, two things have happened: an accumulation of sediment has created a high spot beyond which a series of deep ruts have washed out.
After they finish improving the shoulders of the driveway, I’m hoping they will be able to re-grade the drainage swale.
Fingers are crossed. For them to get both jobs completed and, more importantly, that they actually show up today.
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Fence Bit
Because I can, I turned on the US Open tennis tournament last night and caught a very entertaining first-round match between Coco Gauff and Laura Siegemund. It’s a treat to escape from thinking about what needs to be done around here for an hour or two and lose myself in a dramatic battle between two athletes.
I didn’t realize I would also find a ceremony honoring Billie Jean King on the 50th anniversary of her efforts to convince the US Open to give equal pay to women. It is easy to forget that I have lived through as many changes in the world as have occurred in my lifetime. Yet, it seems like there are still so many ways the human race falls short of ideals.
Asher is showing how to lose oneself in a nap.
Cyndie caught him in the landscape pond again. She said this time he went under her makeshift barrier and since she saw him going in, was able to stop him before he destroyed another intake filter. She also reported that he finally got shocked by the electric fence around the pasture.
He seemed pretty subdued to me the rest of the day. I hope he learns to avoid it from here on out.
Shortly after his fence incident, I had the power off while I weed-whipped around it. His timing was just a little off. I’m guessing he doesn’t sense the electric field like the horses can when the wires are “hot.”
I didn’t get bit by fence electricity but I walked into plenty of invisible spider webs yesterday.
Here is one of my phone camera shots where I couldn’t get it to jump to macro lens focus:
The web that wasn’t in focus is one of the few traps I was able to see and thus successfully avoid. The rest are all stuck to my clothes or peeled off my face.
It rained for a few seconds last night, despite the weather radar failing to depict any precipitation overhead. It was too brief to even get anything wet.
I called for an update on the schedule for getting our driveway shoulders professionally finished and was finally given a date.
“Wednesday,” he said.
I assumed he meant next week but, no, he told me it would be this week. I’m not going to hold my breath for that to actually happen.
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Relative Something 