Let The Work Begin!

It's time to break ground and get to work. All the planning has led up to this point. I sure hope this works. The next few days are going to be digging out the footers for the posts. In this diagram it's the blocks labeled "Footer".

I have to mention a tool that made this work 200 times easier than I thought it would be...and that is the Hammer Drill. We got this bad boy from Harbor Freight. A hammer drill is similar to a typical rotary drill that you would use to drill holes in wood or other dense materials. The difference is that it adds a percussive action to it in addition to the rotational motion, similar to an impact wrench, but instead of rotary impact, you get a hammering impact motion. So in simple terms, it hammers and drills at the same time. The beauty of the tool is that you don't necessarily have to drill with it, you can just use it like a hammer. More like a jack hammer.

Day 1 Sit Rep

It's not the size of a typical handheld drill, but rather its the size of a cinder block with a foot long bit attched to it. You can see it in the videos. But by attaching the spade bit to it, I'm able to use it like a jack hammering shovel. It cuts through large amounts of dirt each pass and unearths massive amounts of material very quickly. Which allows a single person (me), to dig all the footers in about 3 days worth of work. Keep in mind that my work day under the house is only about 3 - 4 hours given that I still have a day job which is needed to support my family.

Day 2 Sit Rep

Day 3 Challenge

At the end of this stint of work, we'll have all the footers dug out and ready to be filled in with concrete. I wish we were ready to fill them up, but there is still work to do to finish out the concrete mixer, and the more disappointing task of removing foam from the subfloor still remains.

Day 3 Sit Rep

Another tool of note that will be invaluable for this work is the concrete mixer. We purchased this little beauty from Harbor Freight. It is intended to stand upright about four feet high or so. But we need it to fit into a crawlspace that is not much higher than that in some spots, which doesn't leave enough space to maneuver and actually use the mixer to pour. So the plan is to leave off the front leg and rig up a block for the front foot. Then we want to mount the triangle shaped wheel base horizontally and secure it along the body of the mixer; essentially gaining us about one and a half to two feet of reduced height. This should give us enough space to maneuver the mixer as well as use it to pour the concrete. Cross your fingers.