8-5-07

New Dog House

The hole that Ted Pyle dug for me turned out to be really nice and level with only just a little carving away and light filling to get the ground level for the forms I made for the footing. Ted had suggested that I water down the area before pouring as that would help settle any disturbed ground. I watered it down for a couple of days and then called for concrete to be delivered. I had my neighbor Matt come up and help with the pour. It took longer than I though because the truck didn’t have good access and the dirt piles were in the way somewhat. It was a good leaning experience to see what the trucks needed to get around the job site.

Footings just poured.

First row of insulated concrete forms (ICF’s)

Two rows up.

Detail of rebar in a corner block. Along the wall is a 2x8 ledger that I will hang the floor joists from. The ledger will be bolted to the wall with j bolts that go into the wall cavity and will be strong when poured with concrete. At this time they are attached to the wall with screws that go into the plastic webs that are spaced every 8 inches. As you can see the blocks lock together on the top and bottom. The blocks that are next to the corners are tied together with zip ties. The rebar steel snaps in to the plastic webs horizontally. The vertical rebar is just dropped in from the top.

I used my fathers old bolt cutters with a pipe ‘snipe’ to help me cut the rebar. I just used a piece of pipe to make the bends I needed for the corners.

At this time the mortgage delinquency problem is in the news. I thought it was interesting to see from this map where the problems are. Not much of a problem in Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas.

 I remember folks saying when I first came to the area, that when the rest of the country was on a roll, eastern Montana was in the dumps and the reverse was true too. Seems right for now….

The walls continue to grow out of the ground.

I think I forgot to mention that my friend Bill 3 Shockley stopped by on his way to Mongolia. He intends to ride across the Gobi desert on this KTM. I met Bill several years ago over at Bob’s MotorWerks. He was on his way to South America and that was my first introduction to these guys that just get on a motorcycle and GO anywhere!!! Bill has been a tutor for me and I hate to write this but he is sort of a hero to me. Jeez, he is a fearless little bastard that just takes off into the unknown and figures his momentum will carry him through. He isn’t very good about writing me what is happening but now and then I get a note from his son Bill 4 (he is the one I bought the Fat Dog from last year). Any way long story shortened somewhat, at last hearing--- Bill 3 is in the middle of the Gobi desert with a fractured rib, bike that is somewhat blown up but probably fixable. Bill reports that Mongolia is like Montana with out fences. Six days of riding and hasn’t seen a fence. The people live in round tents. He says it is the toughest ride of his life. This is truly the other side of the world. Lucky bastard, …IF… he makes it back to tell the story…………

The window bucks are now put in and there will be another round of blocks over them. At this point I ran out of blocks. I needed thirty more blocks that would be coming on a truck in a few days.

The temperature has been in the 100’s most days and down in that insulated hole it would get just smoking hot fairly early and about 11 o’clock it would run me out until evening. I drug out an old sheep water tank and fill it with water from the well up on the hill. I walk up several times a day to cool off and wash the sweat off.

Some of the blocks need to be trimmed around the door and windows. I just used a hand saw as the power saw would just cover me with little beads of the insulation that stick with static electricity. This pile is about the entire scrap that I have left from the project. The blocks are four feet long, 16 inches high and a foot thick. There will be a 6 inch concrete reinforced wall in the foam insulation sandwich.

These supports will help keep the window bucks from distorting with the weight of the wet concrete.

There is going to be a nice view from this window.

All the block finally stacked up. Now all I need to do is brace it up.

Friday night at the Miles City Books and News is ‘open mic’ night. There have been amazing arrays of musicians that show up. This week I think there were 14 different musicians that showed up. There was a first for the open mic night. This guy came in with a trombone and did an incredible three tunes. “Bones” have a wonderful tone and this guy was really good and the crowd gave him a huge hand with lots of whistles and shouts.

Another ‘first’ was a regular named Rick. This time he tried for the first time an electric amp and played some really deep blues. Rick usually plays more folk type music. He was a big hit during the Lewis and Clark days when he played music that was played during that trip by the adventurers. Rick usually brings his banjo and that is always a crowd favorite. This was his first night out with an amp. He liked it. We liked it!!!

This was a really special night all around. Here is Joe who owns the store and is also our new mayor of Miles City (also rides a whiner K bike BMW). Sitting next to him is Richard who lived here three years ago but left to go over to France to follow a young lady that had worked here for the BLM. Richard seems to be doing well over there with her as they have two babies now. I have always loved Richards guitar playing. When everybody is talking and not paying attentions he will just ‘noodle around’ in the background, sort of like he is doing here as Joe is talking to the crowd. I sure would like to have Richard to move back. I miss his music.

I went in to get some photo gray glasses with bifocal lenses for ridding my motorcycle. I have trouble with having to stop, take off my dark glasses, put on my reading glasses, look at the map, take the readers off and put the dark ones back on. Often I would have to do it all over again as I forget what I just looked at. These photo gray should let me read my tank bag map as well as ride without that hassle. The Optician I went to is a guy I met over in Forsyth a few months ago. He was ridding an old ‘Toaster Tank’ BMW. When I went in to get my glasses he said that he was having trouble with his bike and couldn’t get it started. He wanted to come over to Miles for the bike show this weekend. He showed up on Saturday morning with it on his trailer.

We adjusted the valves and checked the spark and gave it a try and it roared to life and ran just as smooth and quiet as a new bike. Mark rode this bike for years when he was going to school and finally after years of neglect he had it completely restored by a guy over in Minnesota. We took a ride out to the Kinsey farm area and it ran strong and smooth. The bike show turned out to be not much and I think the guy said they only had 30 something bikes and last year they had over 50 (I had three in it). I hear that it was the same over in Glendive this spring show where they didn’t have many bikes show up either. Not sure what is going on but it was pretty hot over here at this time. Oh, Evil Kneivl days were going on over in Butte so that might have siphoned off a few Harleys.

All the blocks are in place and I am now starting to do the bracing needed to stabilize the walls for the pour.

Cross braces and there is a walk way around the top. These braces and scaffolding structure are loaned by the lumber company for the job.

I looked in my junk pile and found some old concrete jacks that I had found in the dump years ago down in Nevada (when it was OK to scrounge/ recycle in the dump). These give good control on lining up the walls. I had carried these around for years knowing that ‘some day’ they would come in handy. I had forgotten about them and was only looking around in my junk pile for the turnbuckles I knew I had there.  Bob Clement said he used some sort of turnblckles to line up his wall when he poured his house. I did find the turnbuckles but ended up not using them as these old jacks worked just fine.

I will need the walkway when handling the concrete chute.

Hey, I found a little Polaroid camera I bought at a yard sale for $3 last year that I took on the Nez Perce ride over in Idaho as a back-up camera. I only took a couple of pictures with it and this is one of them. That is Eric, John and the Big Whiner (actually Micah before he started whining). The boyz are about to head over to Idaho again for the ride this year. Unfortunately Idaho is on fire and I would imagine they will have to skirt the fires and ride in a lot of smoke this year. I just got news from Keith that he finally got his little KLR fixed up in the shop in Red Lodge and was riding it home when all of a sudden the engine made a horrible noise. He shut it off right away but it looks/ sounds like it might have broken the ‘doo hickey’ which as I remember adjusts the timing chain. These doo hickey’s can fail on the KLR’s and that is why the guys change them out with an after market piece. I don’t think Keith had done that on this bike as it was still fairly low mileage. He was so excited to have the KLR fixed and be able to go on the ride with his friends but now that plan is shot in the ass. I offered him one of my bikes if he wants to come over and get it. Damn, them motorcycles can give a good guy some grief at times.

I did a lot of bracing on these walls, actually more than the book called for at the suggestion of a guy I met at the lumber yard when I was in there to ask questions about how to pour the walls. He came out and looked the project over and suggested more braces. His name is Darby and he lives up in the Pine Hills just east of here maybe 5 miles as the crow flies. More if the crow drives. Darby has poured several of these foam block form walls and even though I had done everything according to ‘book’ I took his advice and put in lots of ‘extra’.

Darby showed up with his vibrator, which settles the concrete in the walls and keeps air pockets and voids from happening. That little yellow cordless drill I just bought for the project. It turns out to be wonderful as everyone that owns one says they are. I have been dragging my heels and vowing not to get one but I am really glad I went ahead and bought one after using it for a couple of days.

I had cut these pieces of strand board to cover the hole in the bottom of the window bucks. Darby suggested I put a couple of little braces to prop the board against while we poured in the slot as it would help direct the mud. That turned out to be a great help.

Here is Darby all smiles before the concrete showed up.

Bruce Helland showed up to help, as did Brad Sauer. I didn’t get a photo of Brad as right away the truck showed up and things got REAL busy for about four hours.

OK, here are the walls freshly poured. It got a little messy as we were using the chute off the back of the cement truck rather than using a pumper truck that has a big tube on an arm overhead. It was a lot of work since there wasn’t much elevation of the truck for the concrete to flow down the chute. A lot of the time we had to drag the mud down the chute by hand and drag it along the channel in the top of the wall over to places we couldn’t get the truck to pour into. After the first truck left Brad had to leave so I gave an emergency 911 call to Charlie and Mathew my neighbors for HELP!! As always they showed up and ‘saved’ the day for us. Charlie was in charge of operating the vibrator motor and Mathew moved the concrete down the chute of the truck. We about wore Mat out as he worked like a slave up there. Matt is young, strong and agile which was a big help in what he had to do.

Signal Butte in the distance got to watch the whole process.

The walls ended up being straight even after all the thrashing and bouncing around we did. Those extra braces sure did help.

We were really lucky to have a nice day to work. Most of the morning it was slightly overcast and didn’t get hot like is has been for weeks now. I think last week it was up to 112 degrees and over a hundred every day. I don’t think it got over 80 during the pour, which helped us working dogs.

I just looked at the tickets the concrete truck guys left me (bill $$$) and I see they delivered 4 tons of cement, 15 tons of 3/8 gravel, 12 tons of sand, for a total of 31 tons of concrete. This is going to be a heavy duty, super insulated, air tight, bullet proof………Dog House.

I am very happy with the pour and especially since no one got hurt as can happen when dealing with working high and heavy equipment. I did end up with a war wound but I got it early in the morning when I was out adding extra braces when it got light. I couldn’t sleep just thinking about the expected pour and all the things that……………………………… ??????????

It is only a deep scratch but it bled like mad and almost filled up my glove with blood before I got it stopped.

It is Sturgis week and the Harley boyz are really moving through. This Broadus highway I live off of is one of the main roads to the action. It seems like everytime I go to town I see lots of big Harleys in the gas stations as well as lots of them parked in the motels. I guess I could go down as I let the concrete cure but somehow I just don’t have the interest this year. It does look like nice hot weather for a ride though. It is only a couple hundred miles……….just a short ride……….. hell, I just might…………