2 out of 3 ain't bad

Both Parm and Gary reported in today.  Gary had a dump truck with a pup trailer and Parm, the big rock truck.  Young Parm was on another job.  They made good progress and there is probably only 2-3 big loads left including the dirt to remove when Parm makes me a ramp to get in and out of the pit and latter drive Alfie out.

I spent the day digging most of the final finished elevation in the last quarter of the pit and the purchasing hoist straps and yet another pit pump. I also went through the majority of the dug dirt and filtered out all of the medium and larger rocks (they get dumped at a different location).  This is done by dumping the bucket of dirt onto the side of the hill and letting all the rocks roll to the bottom.

The most exciting completed task today however was at the end of the day when I worked late and got 4 of the 22 pallets of ICF to the bottom of the pit.  Alfie will be able to lift the skids with 5 layers.  So I will need to remove the top two layers of each skid once they are in the hole in order to do the final positioning.  This is miles better than hand bombing every block from the top of the hole to the bottom and I was jubilant when the first skid touched the bottom. The fifth skid is hooked up and ready to lift down but I ran out of time before the 8PM noise cutoff.  It is taking quite a bit of work to lift the skids off because, as I previously wrote, when they were delivered they were lowered from the truck two skids at a time.  This means there is no roof to install the straps between them.  So I am having to use a big metal bar to separate the skids enough to squeeze the strap end through.

The most exciting news for tomorrow is that Parm, Gary, and Young Parm will be arriving at Kask Concrete on Barnett Hwy at 7:30 AM tomorrow to pick up my concrete blocks.  We will then spend the morning installing them before digging out the final portion of the north Wall.  Once that is complete we will load the final dirt and call this excavation job complete.

I briefly talked with Parm today about the final bill and was thrilled with his response.  We will stay close to the original estimate for the entire job (not the per lode cost) and then I have agreed to work off the balance when I finish the house by offering my services to run the excavator for free for a few weeks on some of his other jobs.  This is a humongous relief financially for me as strictly by the load count we would be at least double the original $22K estimate.

Thanks for visiting.