Year One in Our New Home - Pouring the Pad

This was an exciting part of the project because we thought we were all set to move the house on site in June. So, pouring the concrete pad had quite a bit of significance. I left the layout and planning to Alan because he had the most knowledge of the Okanogan County building codes among other reasons. Besides he was just so efficient. Throughout this process I marveled at my father-in-law's persistence and efficiency. I'd come home from school and something else was done--the layout of the pad was lined out, the waterline was installed and located precisely where it would feed into the house, forms were built, the rebar cut and hung. This phase of the process went on from early April until May 4th, when the concrete trucks arrived--three of them, I believe, carrying a total of 18 tons of concrete for our six inch deep pad.

The day before the pour, the concrete guys came out to look at our bridge. The next morning they came back with a bunch of old timbers that they wanted to use to shore it up. That morning, I also propped the span with railroad ties underneath, to make them feel better. I was convinced there was nothing to worry about (after seeing the septic tank delivered safely across). But these guys were definitely not convinced. On his way across, the driver of the first load snapped one of the reinforcing timbers and froze on the bridge, eyes fearfully wide, sure as heck he was about to go in the creek. But he pulled across no problem as did the following two deliveries.

Building the forms was a much greater undertaking than I imagined. The tops of each two by six, scrounged from around the ranch, had to be perfectly level. I wish I would have counted, but you can see for yourself, there were a lot of two-by-sixes used to build the form. Also, each two-by-six needed two or three two-by-four stakes. That was a lot of work, too. Then, we had to fill in two of the rectangles created by the forms with dirt for strength...which I know is impossible to imagine, because I was there and that sentence doesn't come close to describing it...so just note the picture.

Finally, on May 4th, my brother-in-law, Shane (who had experience using a screed to level the concrete with the forms), Alan and I tamped, screed and smoothed until the job was done. It was very satisfying to see it there, at last. Little did we know that getting the house removed from the land it was already occupying was going to be the most time-consuming and frustrating part of the entire process...