Dan, I am a wuss too. The whol time, I'm thinking "60 lb bags for pete's sake!" I had a "fixer upper" apartment set up. 3 rentals, and I got used to carrying 60 lb bags. Up 3 steps, cross the porch, down, 5, then down 5, turn the corner and go into the basement or garage. I hefted an 80 onto my shoulder and thought I hadn't enough coffee that morning. i knew I had made a mistake when i got to the bottom of the "bouncing down the first set of 5 steps". That little string of muscle that goes along the collar bone, um, hurtin! So 40 bags, you can't buy as much beer, but you have a deck upon which to rest. Where's the fool? Enjoy it!
On Tue, 12 Aug 2008, Dan Rossi wrote: > Yes, I am a big wuss. I am a balding, hairy backed, little girl in knee > socks. > > Here is the deal. I am finally going to build the landings and stairs for > my deck. There will be an upper landing at the level of the deck, and a > lower landing with three steps leading down to the yard. The lower > landing will have steps going down from two adjacent sides. The third > side will obviously have the stairs going up to the upper landing. and, > the forth side will just have a railing along the edge. > > There will be two posts holding up the outer edge of the upper landing, > and the inner edge will be bolted to the rim joist of the deck. The lower > landing will have four posts. > > I have to pour footers for each of these six posts. Around here, rules > are that footers have to be 36 inches deep. Well, when I dug the footers > for the deck, after 36 inches we were still bringing up top soil and a bit > of gravel. No clay, no big rocks, no sand and certainly no bedrock. So, > we put the extention bar on the power auger and went another 18 inches > down. We only just started hitting clay and rock at the 54 inch deep > level. > > Those holes were 12 inches in diameter and they sucked up about 7 80 pound > bags of cement each. > > These landing footers will only be 8 inches in diameter but will most > likely still go 54 inches deep, plus a little above grade. Each hole will > take a bit more than 3 80 pound bags to fill, a total of about 20 80 pound > bags. > > I'll will now describe where I live for those of you who haven't heard my > rantings before. For those of you who have, just ignore me as usual. > > From the street you have to walk up 10 steps, then there is a little 2 > foot landing. Then you go up another 10 steps. Then there is a 60 foot > long landing. Then up another 10 steps, 2 foot landing, 10 steps, 5 foot > landing, three more steps. OK, you are almost there. You are now at one > end of a courtyard. I, of course, live at the far end of the courtyard. > So, walk about 170 feet down the courtyard trying to stay on the sidewalk > without kicking over the little mushroom lights or flowers along the > edges. Now turn left and go around the side of my house, through a gate, > and into the yard. Now imagine humping 80 pound bags of cement along > that whole thing. > > Rather than do all 20 bags in one day, I decided we would do 4 bags per > evening, each night of this week. > > When we got to Lowes last night, and were looking at the bags of concrete, > I just couldn't face it. I did not want to hump those 80 pound bags up > all those damn stairs and along the courtyard. So, I noticed that next to > the 80 pound bags were these nice 40 pound bags of cement. Sure, it would > cost a bit more money, on the order of 20 or 25 bucks more, and require > twice as many trips, but 40 pound trips are sooo much better than 80 pound > trips. I caved. Yep, I admit it, I am a girly man. I slung 8 40 pound > bags onto the cart, loaded them into the trunk of our car, and since > Teresa insists on helping, we unloaded the bags at home. I ran the bags > up to the long landing. Teresa took them from there to the house. She > had the longer distance so I unloaded the bags faster than she could bring > them up to the house, so I hauled them from the landing to the top of the > stairs and she moved them from there to the house on a dolly. It actually > only took a few minutes, but was so much less painful than those 80 > pounders. One night down, four more to go. > > Hopefully, we'll get the footers dug and poured this weekend. I'll let > the list know how it goes. > > -- > Blue skies. > Dan Rossi > Carnegie Mellon University. > E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Tel: (412) 268-9081 >
