Slab Prep and Pour (Part 3 of 4) - June 13, 2007

It is Wednesday morning, June 13th, and Miss Jan's birthday. I fixed her a nice breakfast, gave her a card (surprise flowers came later at the office), and sent her off to work. Once again it was me and the shovel. I was in a time crunch for getting the site prepped because my slab pour had been moved up by one day. I also had to find a new crew for the pour because the guys I had gathered for Saturday have regular jobs during the week. I called a couple of guys (retired or self employed) from my Serve-and-Be-Served group at church and soon had a new crew. I was getting ready to excavate the 10" deep footer around the edge of the slab when Kevin called and told me he could get the cement, for a better price, but only on Thursday. Double YIKES! I quickly called my new pour crew. What a blessing these guys are. Without hesitation, they all said no problem.

Now I've lost two days of prep time, a big deal with my tendency to be slow. Those who know me best will confirm my Indian name, "Dances with Tree Sloths". I called Miss Jan to tell her our plight. When she got home at 6 p.m., I still had to dig about half the footer and lay in rebar and steel mesh, all before ten o'clock the next morning. Miss Jan changed into work clothes and jumped right in beside me. I swung the pick to bust up the dirt (which was slightly softer than rock) and Miss Jan cleared it out. Soon we were working by flood light. I told Miss Jan to go to bed, as I was going to have to pull an all-nighter. She said we were in this together, and we pressed on.

Finally the digging was done. I asked Miss Jan if she wanted to use an oxy-acetelene torch and bend some rebar for the corners. Her response was, "Really? You’d let me do that?" I grabbed a concrete paver to use as a 90 degree jig (I like tight tolerances). I showed Miss Jan how to light the torch and adjust the mixture, then how to heat and bend the rebar and quench with water. I watched her do the second one. This lady is a quick study and a wonderful blessing in my life.

Knowing she could handle it, I began laying out the steel. As you can see, we put in plenty of rebar. We worked all night, and dawn began to illuminate the eastern sky. By 9:00am our crew began arriving. At 9:30, we were still tying steel mesh.

Talk about overkill! Bill, having many years of experience with concrete, was tapped to be project lead. I asked if he thought we were ready, and he just looked around in silence, then said...."You learned this from Wayne, didn't you?" Bill, myself and many others helped Wayne build a guest house last year, and Wayne and I share a preference for overbuilding rather than just doing the minimum. With Bill's comment, I knew Miss Jan and I had done a good job! Site prep was finished with fifteen minutes to spare. The concrete truck showed up right on time at 10:00am.

Slab Prep and Pour (Part 2 of 4) - June 12, 2007

On Tuesday morning, I began excavating for the four inch deep, 13'4" by 17'4" slab. Mid-morning, I called the cement company to schedule the delivery of five yards of cement on Saturday morning. Imagine my surprise when they said they were closed on Saturday. YIKES! I had called a week earlier and was told they deliver on Saturdays. I now learned they're open three Saturdays a month and closed one - June 16th, formerly my slab pour day.

Then I remembered that our neighbors Kevin and Amber just poured a slab for their new house. I called Kevin and found out he's a plant manager for the local Cemex company. He said they were closed on Saturday, but he could probably get me a Friday pour. With that problem solved, I got back to shoveling. We were approaching the summer solstice, so the days are really long, affording me the maximum amount of shovel time.

Slab Prep and Pour (Part 1 of 4) - June 11, 2007

With the hottest part of summer approaching, we were anxious to pour a concrete slab and start lifting heavy blocks. Nothing is quite as satisfying as spending your days in the sun flirting with heat stroke.

Miss Jan and I borrowed a camper from our friends Dennis and Joni, who live south of the PPR on the other side of the interstate. They even hauled it over and helped us set it up. On Monday, our friend Don came out to set up batter boards and give me pointers on pouring a good slab.

I soon realized that the batter boards surrounded a large pile of dirt which could only be moved with a wheel barrow and shovel. Fortunately it was early June and all danger of frost bite was gone. My major challenge was keeping sunscreen on my skin while I pumped every drop of liquid consumed out through my pores. When Miss Jan arrived after work, she helped me set up form boards. We worked well into the night to make them secure and square.

Wiring the well June 3rd 2007

I took a temporary job that our friend Ross offered me doing some field work for a mining operation. Ross is a Mining Engineer and needed someone in Winnemucca, Nevada. The job lasted eight weeks. For those of you who do not know where Winnemucca is, it is just east of the middle of no where. After wrapping up that job and working a couple months with another friend, Mike, doing concrete curbing and grinding, it was time to put in more time at the PPR. Working part-time affords me time for projects on the Ranch. Our next big project is building a well house to hold our water storage tank and the presssure tanks that will supply water to each of the three houses when the PPR is sectioned off into three parcels. Before starting the well house, we needed to get the well wired up to electric. I began by making a trip to Benson Lumber to gather materials. Having never done this before, I had lots of questions. With all the materials on hand, Jan and I headed out to the PPR. We started by digging trenches and installing conduit. Next we pulled wire from the meter box to the well control box. Just for the purpose of testing the well, we did not hook up the pressure tank at this time. We left the 1 1/4" PVC pipe open so we could flush the well lines with the first water. I had Jan double-check my connections and we were ready to throw the breaker and see if we did it right. With a quick flip of the wrist followed by a rapid removal of the hand from the circuit breaker (electricity makes me a little jumpy), we heard silence. For about ten seconds we stared anxiously at the end of the pipe. It seemed like an eternity and I had apprehensively begun to reach for the breaker to turn it off when all of the sudden we heard a sound. The check valve we had installed in the pipe began to make a low vibrating buzzing sound. Pressure was building in the line. We stood out of the way, not knowing how forceful the water would exit. With the passing of a few more seconds, we knew. We looked on excitedly as a stream of crystal clear water exited from the pipe and landed on the dry earth about two feet away. As the water flushed the lines, it felt cold and inviting on this hot summer day. Next we had to hook up the pressure tank and flush it by filling and draining it five times according to the manufacturers instructions. With the flush complete, we hooked up our garden hose and prepared to taste our water for the very first time. We flushed the hose for several seconds and I told Miss Jan to see what she thought. She drank several swallows and said it tasted great! She then passed the hose to me and I tasted the water. I had to agree it tasted great! With another little project complete we bowed our heads and prayed, thanking God for giving us a little piece of this earth to call our own and for the cool clear water we just enjoyed.

Electric and telephone service come to the PPR January 2007

With the big dig and drilling the well behind us, it is now time to wrap up the electric and phone line installation. Our electric service is provided by Sulpher Springs Valley Electric Co-op and I asked them about ten-thousand questions and they answered every one of them. I really enjoyed working with them. The crew came out and began assembling and dropping conduit into the trenches. They installed two switches at this time too. When the crew prepared to set the transfor-mers, we found that we did not prep the areas correctly. The electric crew had another job that had a start date coming up soon and they said we had to prep the transformer pad areas properly and they would be back after the next job was through. They were gone a little over a week and when they came back Jan and I had prepared three pristine transformer pads. Also






during this time, Qwest had their contractors come out and lay in the conduit for the telephone lines as we back filled over the electric conduit. Our neighbor Brian, who partnered with us for the electric install, brought down his tractor to fill in the trenches when everything was finished. This was a large time-consuming task, but we are sure there will be other tasks that make this one pale by comparison.