Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  The past couple of days saw some progress on our construction projects.  First the builders installed the “plates” (the greenish treated 2x4s clearly visible in the third photo).  These plates are held to the concrete with lag bolts embedded in the foundation.  There's actually a thin layer of special foam between the plates and the concrete; this forms a watertight seal even in the presence of slight imperfections in the surface of either the foundation or the 2x4.  Next up was the “rim board” – the sheets of 1" thick OSB standing vertically on top of the plates.  Finally came the joists, those marvels of engineered wood I blogged about earlier.  As I write this, the mud room and sun room are finished to this stage.  Tomorrow morning an inspector is due, to sign off on this stage of work.  Next up: on Friday, the insulation team will be here to put R50 insulation between the joists, and in the afternoon the builders will install the OSB tongue-and-groove sub-flooring.  There's a pile of 2x6s remaining from the lumber delivery.  I'm guessing that these will be used for framing the mud room, but that's just a guess...

This morning I started the work on the “filling station” we're putting up, to dispense gasoline and diesel for our trucks, tractor, and various other machinery.  This will be located near our driveway entrance, adjacent to the concrete apron for our outbuilding.  The nozzles, filters, gauge, and hoses will all be housed in a small building there.  This will be constructed of 8" cinder block, with inside dimensions of 32" wide by 16" deep.  It's roof will be a single large stone slab, and the outside will be faced with rock.  The inside will be taller than it looks: from 3' underground to 6' above ground; a 9' vertical span.

What I did this morning was to dig the hole for the footer and foundation for this building, and also a ditch for the gasoline and diesel pipes to be buried in.  The footer (on the advice of our mason) extends a foot out from all sides; it will be a 6' x 4'8" x 8" slab of reinforced concrete with a 6" diameter drain hole in the exact center.  From the footer, a wall of 8" thick reinforced concrete will rise to 6" above ground level to form the base for the cinder block.  We're hoping to have all of that poured within two weeks.  The hole:

The majority of that gravel and soil I dug out with my backhoe, but the “finish work” was all by hand, with a plain old shovel.  In the 90°F heat, that was hard work!  It didn't help a bit that the soil there is quite wet once I get down about 2'.  I think that's because of the irrigation canal, which is about 50' away.  Hopefully it's not a leak of some kind!

Jahar, our Savannah cat, had us a bit worried starting last night when I cleaned his litter box – and discovered it contained nothing.  If you own cats, you know this is pretty weird.  So this morning I hauled him off to the vet, yowling and hissing and spitting, and generally being scary pissed off.  When I got him there, they (of course) wanted a weight – and tiny little Madison, a vet tech there, just reached into the carrier and hauled him out, all the while he was acting like a furry chainsaw.  I'm about three times her size, but I would have hesitated much more than she did!  Dr. Russell gave him the once over, and pronounced him just fine as far as she could tell – temperature normal, weight the same as last visit, bladder not full, and poop production just fine (as demonstrated while Dr. Russell was holding him :).  So I brought him back home with instructions to basically just watch carefully for the next couple days.  Debbie just told me that he's been eating and drinking, so maybe whatever his problem was has just resolved itself...