(written on the 22nd from notes taken previously)
Today was pretty much all day foundation work. The three of us worked together to build up the level of dirt to make it even with the bottom of the form-a-drain.
I screened the dirt for rocks, and Heather and Hans did the build up, though I helped a little bit with the build up here and there.
The screening process was slow to begin with. At first, I was just picking the rocks out by hand.
Then I figured out a way to get the rocks to sort of settle themselves out by quickly shoving little mounds of dirt into the tractor bucket, the rocks being heavier, would then roll down the little dirt mounds to the side, making it easier to sort.
But it was still really slow, so I got a thick cardboard box and drilled a bunch of holes in it, hoping to put the dirt inside and use that to sift out the rocks and keep just the dirt, as any rock in the clay is a leak point for liquid, and the goal is for any water that might somehow manage to get down to the level of the form of drain to hit the clay and then go sideways into the form of drain and not continue down saturating around the foundation.
The cardboard idea would have succeeded, but it would have been really slow, so I paused what I was doing for a bit and wandered around and found a rack attachment for the four wheeler that had a metal mesh grid pattern in the bottom.
Perfect. 😎
It took a little while to figure out how to make the most of that little tool, but I figured out fairly quickly that putting that rack at about 45 to 60° angle meant that when I would drop dirt through the rack, the holes were that much smaller, which would sift out even the vast majority of the little rocks, which meant the dirt that I was bringing to Heather and Hans was supremely sifted.
🥳
We spent all day working on that, and then had hopes to be able to put up the self sticking rubber water barrier. Unfortunately, we learned after a fair amount of effort that we weren’t going to be able to put on the self-sticking water barrier.
They call it self sticking, but in reality, it takes a significant amount of pressure to make it actually stick. If you just peel the backing off and then touch it, it’s not sticky at all: it only becomes sticky once you press very firmly against it.
Well, the basement wall block is EF block, which means it’s a mixture of just plain old styrofoam and concrete, and though it’s fairly rigid, it’s not going to withstand the necessary pressure to make that self sticking rubber water barrier stick to it.
😶
😞
Anyway, it was a bit of a rough day and disappointing in some ways, but we made good progress, and eventually we all called it a night.
Thanks to Heather for encouraging me to call it a night, as I had had the little voice whisper in my head that if I kept working I was actually going to injure myself, but I was in the stubborn mode that said I just wanted to get the project done, so I was going to keep pushing myself.
Without her encouragement, I probably would have kept going and likely would have injured myself, as that little voice warned me about.
Onward.
~ stephen
Lift the World 