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February 04, 2006
Add water, stir, then pour
We now have new concrete to replace the concrete that we dug up last weekend. That is, there are now solid footings for the posts, as opposed to the 80+ year old, crumbling, likely not structurally sound concrete that was previously there.
We'd dug three holes, two 12" x 12" by 9" deep and one 15" x 12" by 9" deep (because of a large tree root). This afternoon we lined the holes with chicken wire, cross-laid with 4-10" spikes per hole, and added Redi-Mix conrete on top, which we mixed (actually, it was Trent & Dana--I "supervised"), with shovels, in a mid-sized Rubbermaid tub. We ended up using just under seven bags of the Redi-Mix, leaving three to take back tomorrow morning (along with several bags of miscellaneous plumbing bits from the last several weeks). Each footing is slightly higher than the surrounding floor (or, what's attempting (and failing) to do an impersonation of floor), to prevent water from pooling around the base of the posts.
If the level of moisture in the holes (before pouring the concrete) is any indication, we're definitely going to have to put several sump pumps in place. Dana cut the large tree root out of the middle hole, and encountered a great deal of difficulty in doing this, as the root was absolutely saturated. I figure that, if we could've wrung it out, we'd have gotten a significant amount of water. But, so long as we get to the sump pumps before spring, I don't think that it's going to be a problem.
Posted by plainstext at February 4, 2006 10:24 PM
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