25 September, 2016

Saturday A Nice Cool Day for Construction - Then it Rains; Sunday Even Worse

Saturday was a day for the plants, not so much for the workers trying to get some concrete and block work finished.

The Deck North Wall Going Up
The guys have been working hard to get this project moving along. The deck wall, as it grows, marks the northern terminus of the pool deck. Just outside of that will be an accessibility ramp from the parking area up to the deck - about a two-foot rise, and hopefully, a gentle one at that. Dianna has a real hard time negotiating steep slopes with her walker.

It Changes Minute by Minute
As you can see, it's been changing minute by minute as the day progresses. Probably Monday, some of the marl will be moved around to level out the fill for the deck. We'll see.

Forms Up to Pour South Wall Footing
On the south side, the footing for the wall is a bit easier to see. Here the form has been put in place.

Presto Chango It's Full
And here, the form has magically been filled with concrete. It extends from the house to the pump house. There will also be an accessibility ramp at this end, a virtual clone of the one on the north side.

Pump House Doorway
The pump house is growing too. Here you can see where the door will be going in. The pump house is going to be about twice the size of the old one, and will have roughly the same shape. But it will be constructed to be more bomb-proof than the old one. No more lean and cracks in it's wall.

South Deck Wall Growing Fast Too
The deck wall is quickly growing to its final height. I'm really looking forward to seeing the marl shifted around to fill in some holes.

Pump House Wall Definitely Growing
Here, you can see the walls for the pump house are also growing right along. It won't be long before the opening for the window louver will become evident. Incidentally, the waterfall will be returning, but without the glass marble mosaic. It's going to have a stone-look backing and will gently cascade over them to the pool instead of a straight fall to the pool, which, although it looks marvelous, was entirely too noisy for us.

If Saturday was a day of drizzle and gray, Sunday was even worse. Rain all morning, either drizzle or fairly hard rain. Thunder, off in the distance completed the picture. It was one of those days that made you just feel like napping all day.

A good thing, the thermometer went down to 75 (f), but the humidity for most of the morning was hovering up around eighty-five to almost ninety-percent.

The rest of the day was gray, just like at least parts of the previous two weeks days. One of the reasons we don't live in the Northwest (Olympia, WA) anymore. We couldn't stand the nine months of water torture. Today has been a good reminder of that. We're hoping Monday may see an improvement.

Related to that, we are keeping a sharp eye on that disturbance coming due west from Africa. Invest 97L is tracking West, Northwest, by West, right now, just grazing Venezuela. It could be named Matthew before too long. It looks like it has us in its sights. And there might be another one right behind it. We'll see. Sleep light.


Wilma said...

We had about 12 inches of rain last week. Most of it fell during the night, though. There is something funky going on with the display of the text in the last part of your post.

winjama said...

Hi Wilma, I'd say that's about enough rain for a week or so. night rains I generally don't mind. I just don't care for them night and all freekin' day long.
Finally got the text to display correctly. When I inserted the degree symbol, it injected a whole bunch of needless extra coding. I didn't have to watch it that close before, when I would grab a symbol from the website that I use for that. Guess I will in the future. Thanks for the alert. Cheers,