At Home In The Woods

[nhkabotab7800]

Obed,

thanks for the kind words, I have enjoyed watching your progress and reading everyone's comments.

in regards to your eyebrow question...could you have the brick stop say an inch short of the ledger board ( lower if the vinal sub is going to use straping ) and have the soffit rest on top of the brick?

the devil is in the details and my experience is that subs will do things the easiest way for themselves and rarely make the extra effort to make it work better for the subs that come after them. it is a money thing...less labor more proffit... kudos to you for asking questions from people hear that have more experience than you, many people will not do that.

as far as the brickies go make sure you have good air circulation behind the brick ( honey comb vents at the top and bottom) and a way to let moisture (it will get behind the brick) get out.

brick tie ins should be attached to studs, not just put into the sheathing, easy to check of the drywall is not yet installed. when flashing overlaps ( asphault covered copper ) the overlap should be sealed.

looks good Obed really making some progress now. :thumbsup:

 

[ruralruss]

Hey obed, you sure are quiet!

Russ

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

Obed, did you get much of that flood that hit Memphis?

 

[dcyrilc]

Obed, did you get much of that flood that hit Memphis?

He's fairly high up on top of that hill. If it affected him, I'm willing to bet we would hear a lot about it in the news.

 

[Obed]

Obed, did you get much of that flood that hit Memphis?

Some of the rain that hit Memphis and Nashville also reached here. We did not get nearly as much but we still go enough to cause me some extra work. We got 3 1/2 inches of heavy rain. I was working on this drain tile when the rain started and I had to stop. I was 15 minutes away from finishing. I had a steady stream of rain running down from the roof valley onto this spot and there was no way I could continue working. Unfortunately, my drain tile and gravel got filled with silt so I'm going to have to completely redo it including shoveling out all the gravel and replacing it with clean gravel.

The rain also washed mud, up to 2 inches deep in places, onto the footers that have to be cleaned off before the brick can be laid.

The good news is that the basement stayed dry. Plus, myy inconveniences are tiny compared to what the people in Nashville have been going through.

 

[Obed]

Retaining Wall Drains
Last weekend my wife rented a hammer drill. I used it to install some drains through the 12" poured concrete retaining walls. This thing was a monster. I had to be careful because the slip clutch didn't work reliably. Until I got used to the drill, the drill bit would catch and spin the drill out of my hands. If I wasn't careful as to how I held it, it could have broken a thumb or wrist.

This position about wore me out.

I finally found a position that didn't tire me out so much. I would put pressure on the end of the drill with my shin instead of using only my arms. When I noticed how much concrete dust the drill was causing, I put on a mask. While working, a pretty friend joined me for a visit.

I drilled 5 holes through the walls, three in this wall and two in the other wall. I hit rebar when drilling one of the holes so I had to move over a couple inches and drill again.

 

[Obed]

Wednesday evening after work I installed some drain pipes in the retaining wall holes I drilled on Saturday. I wrapped landscaping fabric around the end of the pipes then used some hydraulic cement to secure the pipes in the holes.

 

[Obed]

My mission in life the past couple weeks has been to prep the house for laying brick. I didn't spend much time on TBN because I was pretty busy. As I mentioned earlier, the construction manager had back filled over the footers and brick ledges in lots of places around the house. I spent several hours after work this week and today removing dirt and gravel from the footers and brick ledges. The brick mason has another job right now and should start laying our brick in a couple of weeks.

 

[Obed]

We had the brick mason come out and look around the house to see if we needed to do anything before he started working.

He said this porch is going to cause him a problem with his scaffolding. He asked us to have the framer provide some extra supports for this porch because the brick mason is going to have to place his scaffolding on top of the porch. I have to say that makes me a little nervous. The mason said that normally the brick goes on the house before a porch roof like this one would be built. That's something we didn't know about and the framer obviously didn't think about before the porch roof was built.

 

[Obed]

The brick mason said the eyebrows would not be a problem. He said that he will cut his brick and make sure that the brick goes all the way to the bottom of the eyebrows. That makes me happy. I don't want a gap between the soffits and the brick.