We started this pain in the ass job back in November or December of last year. Today was the culmination and finale of the project. It was a day I knew was coming for quite some time, cause it should have been finished long before today.
The thought of taking out my cellphone while busting my arse for 5 hours straight never entered my mind. That being the case, I'll just state right up front that I'm borrowing images from Pixabay.com.
The problem with this job, other than it being out of the ordinary from the usual type of work we perform, was the foundation we were inspecting had a house on it.
To make things more complicated, the house is inhabited by a family. It's a small place and they have young kids and an infant. Today we had to drill through the concrete inside the house and take core samples.
To do this, we use a heavy core drill to which a hose attaches for a water supply. You can't drill concrete without water and the filthy stuff gets everywhere.
We would have been in there a couple months back to finish this fiasco of a job if it weren't for the Corbin-19 (as my boss calls it). As it were, we also would have been willing to wait to wait longer but the owner was freaking out.
She ended up over in Iraq or somewhere in the Middle East and hasn't been able to make it back to the USA. That's as much as I know except her building permit is expiring. She needed the paperwork on the inspection.
After making arrangements to have the family evacuate the premises for the day, they decided to be there anyway. Thank goodness everything went ok, sort of.
Up At 4:30....err snooze....4:45
It was an early riser before the butt crack of dawn. I had time to enjoy my coffee and then headed to the lab to load all the tools needed for the job.
I won't go through the list but it was a lot of shit to fit in my Nissan Sentra. The core machine went in the back seat strapped down by seatbelt. A Rotohammer, extension cords, shovels, and on and on barely allowed my car doors to close.
My boss, I call him Boss Man Bart, had other errands to run so wasn't there to help in the morning. No worries. I had everything loaded and ready to go in plenty of time. Loading was actually the easy part, except I dropped my coffee and had to stop and pay for another.
I arrived at the residence in El Cajon around 9 AM in the time frame planned upon. Then after unloading everything, Boss Man Bart called. He was giving me the hurry up and wasn't even there yet!
Digging to reveal the depth of the foundation
Before I could begin setting up to core inside, I had to dig on the outside wall of the house and under the foundation, again! I already dug these holes on a previous day, but the pictures weren't of the correct measurements.
At least the dirt was soft from having already been dug up cause the sun was up and hot. Boss Man Bart showed up as I was taking a break after re-digging both holes.
The coring ordeal
It was a struggle all the way through. From finding a gasket to stop the hose from leaking to finding a nearby window to feed the hose inside the house.
Next the shop vaac had a filter on it that wasn't the right size. Not even close. Boss Man Bart had one hell of an employee working for him before I came along. But we got it to work by tying a plastic trash bag around the top to keep it from blowing dust all over the room.
Then came the coring machine. It needs a lag bolt to fasten the base to the concrete slab. I didn't drill the hole for the lag nut deep enough the first time.
This caused the machine to pull up and become unsecure when drilling. I was quick to unplug it before anyone got hurt.
We got one short broken core for a sample and moved on to the next. It didn't go any better. I did put a new lag bolt down after drilling the fastening hole deeper but that wasn't the issue. It was the arm of the coring machine that wasn't tight.
The coring drill moves up and down on this upright arm which also pivots forward or backward. This way you can drill down level at a ninety degree angle or you can set it to drill at even more of an angle.
Being the bottom bolts weren't all the way tight, the arm shifted when the drill got deep. This caused it to bind up, putting a smoky smelling stress on the motor. Not good and we couldn't get the core bit to come out.
Boss Man Bart left the house exasperated so I cleaned up our mess and pulled the core bit and drill up and out by hand. It's the proper use of force and a lot of it.
Clean up and back to the lab to unload
One hour there and an hour back, but the cleanup was a bitch. It involved mixing quick set concrete and patching the holes we drilled out of the concrete slab.
Then cleaning that whole mess up and packing everything back in my Sentra. By this point the sun was directly overhead and beating down without mercy. Did I dare take a break? I thought about it but I packed up all the crap first, had a water, then hit the road back to the lab.
That does it for my work day. I left a mess in the lab, but I was at 9 hours and have to go in tomorrow anyway. It can wait until then.
For now, it's nice to be home relaxing with a cold drink and finishing this post here on HIVE. It was the kind of day to be proud of and be happy to forget.
If you made it this far, thanks for listening. I needed an ear to give it to and couldn't think of anything else to write about.
Happy Hiveing!!!
Images Courtesy Of Pixabay.com
Bottom Image Courtesy Of Hive.io Brand Assets
