Winter Is Here!




About the time of our last post the weather was showing signs that the seasons were changing, the temperatures were dropping and we had our first snow fall... normally I'd be wearing a big grin and playing with Trouble out in the snow, but not this year, these atmospheric conditions are now just one more of our daily concerns. 



Jordan and his crew had begun erecting the foundation walls the Remembrance day week and worked through to the thursday so that they could enjoy a three day weekend.  We didn't see them back on the following monday so I can only assume they were either at another job site or their three day weekend had been extended an extra day.  On tuesday they arrived bright and early... actually, it was only early because the rain was coming down and the sky was gloomy... it took two more days to finish putting up the forms for the basement walls and it was during that time that winter officially arrived.  Wednesday we woke to clear skies and the temperature was around -5 degrees... I know the Alberta and interior folk think -5 is just a cool summer evening but for us this was a major climate change.  The guys started the day by getting a good size fire going and by 3:00 had finished putting up the forms.  The engineer came in just before dark and after doing an  inspection of the forms, gave his written ok for the concrete to be poured.  Thursday the pumper truck arrived around 10:00 and was followed shortly by the first of several concrete trucks.  I mentioned in a previous post about the concrete being pumped forty plus feet in the air and back down into the forms, it's actually more like sixty feet.  For any of the mechanically inclined folks who find this stuff interesting, imagine the kind of pump it takes to reliably pump tons of concrete that high into the air...pretty cool eh?... or maybe not.  Anyway, I watched them pour concrete for about five minutes and quickly realized that this was going to take alot longer than the pouring of the footings.  I had to run to town for a bit so on the way back I stopped at Timmy's and grabbed a case of doughnuts... and while only about ten of the original twelve made it all the way home, who'd ever of thought doughnuts could bring such joy to the people.  It took the better part of the day to finish pouring the concrete, but the weather had turned sunny again and things went off without a hitch. 

Removing The Forms

One of my first thoughts friday morning was "Ohh crap!"  As I prepared to take Trouble out, I had to dig out the ski gloves and Sorels as we had gotten our first snow fall of the year during the night.  I'd never really give Trouble credit for being particularly sensitive to our human emotions but he sure has a way of making us let go of our daily worries.  As soon as I opened the front door, he hit the snow running and instead of the usual morning routine of sneaking into the trees across the street, he ran around in circles, barking and deaking left and right to avoid being caught by imaginary chasers... the feeling was contagious and I quickly forgot about the foundation being covered in snow.  Jordan and his crew arrived a little later than usual and I was suprised that they were planning to take the forms off so soon.  It took them about five hours to remove the forms and expose our future basement walls.  If seeing Neal excavating the foundation hole gave us a feeling that this house building thing was actually happening, seeing the foundation walls standing there hammered home the point.

Trouble, Micro-managing

Sometime friday evening Trouble got a worried look and came and curled under our legs.  We could hear the wind whistling and knew we were in for one of our annual windstorms.  A windy day in the city and a windy day where we live are two different beasts.  Being surrounded by giant hemlocks, the sounds and sights are quite dramatic and theres always a lingering thought that a tree may come through your roof at any time.  Fortunately for us, the wind almost always blows in one of two directions and if trees were to come down they'd either miss us or do little damage.  When we were clearing trees to make way for the house we gave this a fair amount of consideration and seeing the direction all the nearby, remaing trees were leaning, I'm confident we removed the right ones.   The temperature once again dropped to -5 and the wind gusted to 70 km/h, blowing uninterrupted for three straight days.  With the windchill, temperatures hit close to -20 and our thermometer hidden in the trees had a constant reading of -12.   To make things worse, snow was in the forecast for later in the week. 

Forms Removed, Just In Time For The Snow

On monday morning (Nov.22) I had to go into town and upon returning there was a different van parked in the driveway.  It turned out to be the crew who would seal the foundation before we backfilled.  I went over to talk to the guys and found out the cold temperatures were affecting their equipment.  They use a compressor and a spray gun to apply a black, tar like material to the exterior of the foundation walls.  A brown, plastic sheathing is then put up to protect the sprayed on material from the backfill.  It turned out the hoses were all frozen from being left in the truck overnight and there really wasn't any way of thawing them; they'd have to come back after they figured a way to get them thawed.  It wasn't until wednesday that they were able to make it back which was quite unfortunate because snow was in the forecast for thursday.  We had hoped to get the drainage pipe in and the foundation backfilled before the snow fell but it wasn't going to happen now.  Once the guys got working, it only took them a couple hours to seal the walls and put up the protective sheathing. 

Installing Protective Sheathing

Neal arrived shortly after the sealing guys left to make sure his excavator would start in the cold temperatures; Starting the machine turned out to be the least of his worries.  Because everything was so wet when he was digging the foundation hole, he had a buildup of wet clay in the rollers that turned the tracks on his machine.  All that wet clay had hardened into ice and when he tried to move the machine, he blew a hydraulic hose.  He spent the rest of the day removing the hose and trying to clean the clay out of the tracks but it was already too late in the day to get a new hose.  Thursday morning light snow flurries had started and Neal showed up with the new hose only to find they had put the wrong fitting on it... he spent most of the morning driving in and out of the valley to get the right hose and then the rest of the day with a blow torch and pick trying to remove the ice from the track rollers.  By the end of the day he had everything moving freely and with the guys coming on friday to install the drainage pipe, he was good to go.  Unfortunately, by the end of the day we had accumulated almost four inches of snow which was covering the areas the pipes would be laid and also the pile of drain rock that Neal would be spreading around the foundation.  If ever we needed a rainstorm, it was now.