Guest House Construction: Part 6

You Can't Make This Stuff Up!

Weather again created some delays, but as the sun came out so did the work crews.  Apparently we are ready for what my builder calls the "make-up guy".  We got a delivery of tension cables on Thursday.  I happened to be home when the guy dropped everything off and after he had dumped all of the cables from the truck I noticed that the address on the label wasn't ours.  Unfortunately, a mistake was made when the truck was loaded (the order number was one digit off) and the poor guy had to get all of the cables back on the truck.  Those things are MUCH heavier than they look.  He basically had to cut all the straps off so he could load each cable one by one.  I offered to give him a hand but he said he could do it.  I'm glad he declined my help to be honest.  It took the guy nearly an hour and he looked like he had fallen into a pool afterwards.  The company had the correct cables (they're cut specific lengths for the build via engineering drawings) delivered on another truck a few hours later, so no harm.

Post-delivery inspection:  PASS (she could have been bribed easily enough with an Elmo cookie if there were any issues)

 

 

 

 

 

 

A crew showed up Saturday morning.  They spent all day basically trenching and grading the pad.  It looked like tough work and it was really hot.  When they were done it looked like we had a giant waffle iron come down on our build.

 
Our builder came out that night to inspect the site and drop off some lumber for the next day.  He seemed happy with everything.  I have no idea what I'm looking at.  I just assume that everyone knows what they're doing.

After a full day of work Sunday, the pad was getting really close to being ready for concrete.  The tension cables are pretty standard in today's builds and have replaced the old re-bar grids you used to see all the time.  As I understand it, if your concrete starts to crack many years down the road, they can come out and apply pressure to the cables to "lift" sections back where they are supposed to be.  I hope I never get to see that in person, but that's why they do it this way.  The guys ran out of lumber so they'll be back on Monday to hopefully finish up.  Monday is Labor Day, but apparently these guys don't care.  When they're done it's another inspection and then the slab can be poured!