Day 2 - Plumb, Level, and Square

 

We're back. The water is still in the trench. Our run-off out the back there is working, but not hard enough. Must've skipped its morning coffee. Remember when I said that we are pumping the water out today? Forget about it. Today is all about plumb, level, and square. Strap on your rubber boots.

The goal for the day is simple: continue framing out the footings. The boards here are a great start, but they need reinforcements. Concrete is heavy, and it will not think twice about Kool-Aid Man-ning its way through one or more of these boards (see Kool-Aid Man-ning definition). As we plumb, level, and square our way around the trench, we tighten up too.

Look down at the bottom here. See those two vertical stakes on the board? They're driven anywhere from 12-18" into the ground and nailed to the board. We'll do this every 4ft or so, closer in those wet spots where the ground is extra soft.

Our next line of defense is the strapping. The strapping are those skinny little planks that are sitting across the top of the footing frame. Those are nailed down too, and they will keep the tops of the boards in place. We use a similar technique for keeping the bottoms of the boards in place, only with a thin strip of metal instead of wood. It's hard to nail wood to the bottom of the footing frame, unless you're a really strong ant with a tiny hammer. Did you know that ants can carry 20x their own body weight? I wish I had an ant that could nail strapping in for me. They have six legs, so I'd give them four hammers! Anyway, we humans have to bend the metal up along the sides of the frame so we can nail it in place.

Give me a quick squint again (remember what we said about squinting..). You may be able to see some rebar running up through the middle of the frame in that upper section. Rebar is short for reinforcement bar and is used to reinforce the concrete as it hardens. I don't know much more than that, so there you go!

The rebar came in 10' lengths. This is how you cut it. The rebar is that horizontal piece that goes through the doohickey attached to the plank. Then, you pull that level down really hard, and the doohickey turns and snaps the rebar. Be careful not to fall when the rebar snaps. I definitely didn't fall when I was cutting rebar today...

Remember, while we are staking and framing the footing, we are checking for plumb, level, and square. What was that? You couldn't hear me? Okay, I'll speak up. REMEMBER, WHILE WE ARE STAKING AND FRAMING THE FOOTING, WE ARE CHECKING FOR PLUMB, LEVEL, AND SQUARE. Very nice.

SOLAR BONUS

Wow. Lucky you! You get a solar bonus! This is a sun path chart that I doodled on. You use a sun path chart as the first step in designing a solar power system. It tells you when your solar panels are going to be in the sun and when they are going to be in the shade. This usually leads to taking down trees, so when you are done doodling on your sun path chart, go plant a tree!