We've had a very busy couple of weeks working on the project. In the past two weeks, I've logged about 40 hours of work between working full days on weekends and putting in an hour or two here and there after work. Each week we've stored around 4 cubic yards.
(How much does a yard of soil weigh? A yard weighs in at 1.5 tons or 3000lbs. (1.5 x 4 = 6 ton's x 2 = 12 tons))
A week ago this past Saturday, Mike & I dug, filled, and humped 130 buckets of soil while also taking down the far end of the concrete wall - yes, all in one day.
This past week, Mike & I dug, filled, and humped around 120 buckets of soil, stone, and concrete debris. I was able to dig a pair of pits (4' round x 4' deep) so that I can bury some rather large boulders. (300+ lbs each) (Put it this way, these stones were so large it took me nearly an hour to dig each hole and undermine the boulders so that they would roll into the pits for burial.)
This past weekend we were able to build a form for a lally column footing (16"x16"x16") using 5000psi concrete with wire mesh and rebar for reinforcement. I created a template out of cardboard to mimick the base plate of the lally column. I placed four 5/8" Jbolts through the template and set their height using the 5/8" nuts. This template served two purposes - 1) the proper alignment of bolts so that when the concrete is dry, the bolts will be in the correct position for mounting of the lally column, and 2) to keep the bolts from sinking into the 16" of concrete.
This evening we placed the new 4"x6" pressure treated header into place. It looks like we're getting somewhere now...
Here's some pics:
