Wednesday, November 18, 2009

revisiting excavation















the past few weeks have been an adventure, to say the least!
we've been battling the weather (thanks tropical storm ida!), inspections (thanks city of charlottesville!) and a deluge of concrete/footing dilemmas. needless to say, we're learning a LOT about the construction process.

as you know, we dug the holes a few weeks ago.
then, we fixed the holes and poured concrete. tommy came by and helped us mix a sturdy, soupy batch of concrete. each of the 22 footings, 24" inches in diameter, needs 6" of concrete...that's a lot of mixing!

the footings solidified well. then we double checked and found some fun errors. more excavating and soil compressing set everything up and now we are ready to set the posts and backfill!!

anyway, this project is still going strong! we've had a great turnout for work days and we've had a great response from the city offices and united rentals. lowe's and nature nurture have been great too, and where would we be without martin's hardware?

please come out and help over the next few weeks! we WILL finish this before the semester ends!!


Sunday, November 1, 2009

CONSIDER IT...EXCAVATED!!!!!

hi freedom fans!
this weekend was a monumental step in FBD's fall 2009 project - we dug all 20+ footing holes, graded the front yard and replanted a rosebush! along with finding artifacts (and by artifacts, we mean bricks, remnants of past flower beds and more bricks), we figured out that there are atleast 4 different types of soils and clays in gladys' and mary's yard. plus, we got to use an AWESOME two-person auger which was super exciting (check out the extreme spinning action in pictures below...thank you united rentals!) we had to haul a TON of soil from the front to back yard, and we probably should have brought a wheelbarrow from the beginning, but it was all part of the process. with rain looming overhead, we decided to wait to finish with the concrete footings. it doesn't look like much now (since we covered over all of our hard work with "sod") but this is a huge task to keep us on schedule.

ANYWAY. this week we'll be pouring the concrete, generously donated by allied concrete. then this saturday will be putting in the posts and working on the framework! hopefully the rain doesn't fill in all 24" of these giant, gaping holes!





























Monday, October 19, 2009

2k9 - the year of the build


welcome to freedom by design 2009!
we're looking forward to a productive fall - we're finally building a ramp for gladys!

stay tuned for more information about building days, progress and the completed project...