Well, on Saturday, Teresa's brother came down to help me bore some rather large holes in my backyard for the deck footers.
Teresa and I had already put up all the string lines, leveled them, squared them, made sure they were parallel and perpendicular to the house, sprinkled magic powder and danced around them in an effort to ward off the almost right gremlins. We got up early on Saturday and were out the door to Home Depot by 7:00 AM. I picked up a Xircon audible liquid level. This is a set of tubes that you connect to either end of a garden hose. Then you fill the hose with water. When the water in both tubes is at the same level you hear a steady tone. Great for eventually marking the height of the posts relative to the ledger board. We went to the rental desk and got us a 12 inch diameter, three foot long auger, the eighteen inch long extention bar, and the engine to drive the whole thing. Then we found we couldn't get it into the car. So we brought it back in and called Teresa's brother who was on his way down to our house. He picked up the gear and was able to get it into his truck. After lugging the damn thing up the infamous four flights of stairs and back to the house, we took a quick break. We then assembled the rig and started it up for a test. We could not keep the thing running. It's idle was set so low, it would immediately stall when you took your hand off the throttle. We messed with the choke. We messed with the idle. We checked the fuel filter. We checked the oil. We sent Teresa out to purchase a new spark plug. No joy. So Tommy and I got to work despite the damn thing. Tom is a big guy, I am not. I gave him the throttle side, but that left me with pull starting the damn thing, probably 50 or 60 times through the entire process. It was very very hard work. However, it was a lot easier than I expected. I fully expected to be thrown around, have my shoulders wrenched, and possibly get a knee or ankle smashed. Nothing like that happened. We would drill down six or eight or ten inches, then pull the auger up and clear the dirt from the bit. Of course, the engine would stall and I would have to restart it after we lowered it back in the hole. Now, the bit weighed about 40+ pounds. The engine about 50+ pounds. and an auger full of dirt weighed, well, it weighed a hell of a lot. At first it wasn't too bad. As we got deeper, it became harder to haul the damn thing up from ground level to high enough to clear the hole and off to one side so we could clear the dirt. After drilling all the holes down to three feet, Tommy was not very happy with the conditions of the bottoms of the holes. We were still in relatively loose, soft dirt and gravel. He convinced me to put the eighteen inch extension bar on and drill until we hit clay or something hard. Well, I now have five four and a half foot deep holes in the yard. We got down to clay or sand stone in two out of the five holes. I am hoping we are close to that in the other three holes. Now, imagine hauling a hundred and fifty pounds of auger, engine, and dirt from ground level up to your shoulders in a nice smooth motion. And doing it over and over until all the holes were cleared of loose dirt. I was one sore puppy on Sunday. I have some nice raw spots on the flesh between my thumb and forefinger from blisters that broke. As an aside, a guy I see in the gym locker room regularly, put in a deck last year. We have been sharing stories about decks for a while. I hadn't seen him for a couple of weeks. I saw him Monday morning. We chatted for a bit, then he saw my hands and said "What the hell did you do to your .. HEY! You drilled your post holes didn't you?" He had the same exact wounds when he did his. We covered the holes with plastic and lumber to keep the plastic from blowing off. I called the inspector today and he will inspect my holes this afternoon. I can start pouring any time after today. I am weeping slightly as I write the following. Since I planned on 36 inch deep holes, and I now have 54 inch deep holes, I need fifty percent more concrete. Which means hauling a lot more 80 pound bags up all the friggin stairs. Also, I expect that some of our bags of concrete that over-wintered will be useless now. I hope that some of them will be fine and I will possibly dump an extra shovel full of portland cement into each batch if they happen to be a bit lumpy. I am not looking forward to this. Later. -- Blue skies. Dan Rossi Carnegie Mellon University. E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: (412) 268-9081
