Doing hard time

3/4 actual size....

I just had the nightmare event. Blogger is supposed to save drafts as you go along. I hit the wrong key and an afternoon of typing and pics went into the void. It starts with an F and ends with a K!

Anyway, where was I?

Oh yeah. Why don't I update more often? Exhaustion. Generally I work, drive home, sometimes via the beach and crash. Most of the time I don't even have the energy to make myself some food outside of a sandwich at best. The upside, I've lost more than 20lbs of that "fine wine/martini belly" I had worked so hard to get. Ten more pounds and I'll be dangerous! I usually leave Cruz Bay about 7:30, late by island standards, and return around 5pm. I get up the mountain by 8:30am. I'm able to start later than most (7am) because I'm up at 1000ft and I left all the giant trees. Virtually my entire work area is shaded for most of the day. When its not I work somewhere else. Plus, it's easy to relax now. In July I got a satellite feed from St Thomas and I set up a wi-fi router and we have a pretty good wireless internet connection around the house. It's not DSL but no complaints from here at $49/month. The only problem is staying awake long enough to read the news and review the stock market. Saving the world has been put on the back burner for now!

a road side beach on the way home...step out of the truck and walk in

When I got back to St John at the end of June, I returned to a completed pour on the lower level. All and all, things went well as I had reported last time. The big problem from a labor point of view was all the spilt concrete up against the forms making their removal a bunch of needless work. Until I was able to rent a jack hammer I went at it with a 14lb sledge for a few days cursing the whole time. Grueling to say the least. In hindsight I should have just gone to the beach while I waited the week to get the hammer from rental company. You learn by doing. I'm not doing that again. The jack hammer took about four or five hours. The only hard part was hauling it up and down the hill.

the best $75 rental I have made so far....

Anyway, Mike and crew had originally said/thought they would take all the forms down and stack the 2x4's and plywood while also returning the rented whalers. Well, you guessed it, it wasn't done by the time I got back. I told Mike to forget it, I would do it. Nothing against Mike, I'm just at the bottom of his work list. Originally he signed up to do just the foundation. The upside is that I save $85 an hour I would have had to pay the crew. The downside, the job takes a whole lot longer. I set about doing it right after I got back.

the site as I found it....under the garbage can, in front of the blue tarp, you can see a square footing. That is the column footing that moved an inch forward causing all kinds of problems as you will see later....

I forget how long it actually took me, but it was about three weeks. I went at it with a 4lb baby sledge and a pick after removing all the spilt concrete. Pound the flat end of the pick behind the plywood and use the handle for leverage to pry the ply loose from the concrete. Three or four spots around the primeter and you are good to go. Most of the time is went reasonably well. The only real problem was there was a lot of it. About seventy full sheets and forty or so half pieces, not to mention first taking off the 1600 or more whalers. Break down the 300 or more 2x4's and pile them, neatly of course, on top of the cistern. Then carry the plywood behind the foundation to be hoisted out at a later date. No way I was going to boost those on top. I may be mad but I am not insane yet. Things moved along until about the ninth or tenth day. I woke up one morning and I could not touch the top of my head with either arm. Oh my god, the pain in my elbows. Apparently that little baby sledge was killing me. I mean you feel it everyday but then you just switch arms. It's no big deal or so I thought. Well, I'm almost three months down the road and I can finally wash the back of my neck and lift up my coffee cup with one hand!

the forms are still up on the inside....

I finished breaking down the forms with two hands for every task. It was the only way. Thankfully the only movement that was excruciating was a hammer motion. Every one says I have an extreme case of tennis elbow. Ace bandage is making a living off me. I took a week off.

I broke the handles on the hammer, baby sledge and two shovels not shown.....

Generally I work seven days a week putting in about seven hours a day. I putz a little on the weekends thinking it all through while I work. Net net, I probably do 40 hard ones per week. If I have to go to St. Thomas (Home Depot) I go on Sundays, usually about once a month.

a passenger ferry makes for St Thomas....

Next on the agenda was building the retaining wall on top of the eight foot base wall we had already poured. Of course I thought it was no big deal, what with it only being four feet high. We could use the plywood on its side and have at it. I said we because I thought Mike and crew would be part of the process. After a week I gave up on him. It was all I could do to have him show up to "shoot" the bolts on cottage. Shoot the bolts? Set up a surveyors level and make sure every bolt around the house was set to the same level so when I put up my steel columns they would all be at the same height. There are other ways to do it but this is the easiest.

Building retaining walls is fairly straightforward when you have a helper. Doing it alone is a whole other treat. I know, I know I should get a helper. That's for another discussion. Trust me, I ran a two man crew for many years. I needed to do this alone if for no other reason than to learn everything that was necessary. You learn every trick in the book by doing it yourself. Yes, it takes longer but not twice as long. There's a lot of standing around when you have a crew, even if it's just one other person. With all the digging and trenching it probably took me another three weeks to put up about 70 feet of winding retaining wall, ranging from four feet to eight feet. Don't forget that includes all of the # 5 rebar, cut and bent.

You line up all the snap ties keeping pressure on two sheets of 3/4 inch ply standing on some flimsy scaffolding and see how long it takes you! Plus, don't forget, you don't have any elbows to speak of.

I added another six feet to this segment.....

Next waterproofing the foundation walls.

Then moving six yards of gravel down the hill to put in my drains before back filling the foundation/lower floor. The task. Move the gravel about 150 feet down a makeshift galvanized luge run after digging a small trench around the perimeter of the foundation.

the luge run....
It's not as easy as you think even if it is very steep. Gravel finds a way to stop even on slick galvanized sheets! Tweaking, tweaking and more tweaking. Three days of tweaking. Up and down the mountain breaking up gravel log jams. Slipping and sliding until help arrived. Denise rode to the rescue. In the old days they would have said the coolie labor has arrived!

that pile originally filled both sheets of plywood three feet high....

We rented a small cottage lower down the mountain above Coral Bay below our property.

Denise stayed nine days three of which were spent shoveling gravel onto the luge run at exactly right amount so that it would not clog the chute except at the very bottom where I shoveled it out of the way. What a god send that Denise showed up. I took a few days off and we putzed about. Anything to help my elbows. Denise left and returned to SF.

All the work to date was the build up to what I was putting off. The deck pier and cement beams that had to go on the lower level. Originally I thought I would address the lower deck slab after the cottage was almost livable. The work as planned was to pour the three individual footings, 4x4x3, for the columns that would support the deck above. We poured these with the walls. The bad news, the last pier on compacted fill moved about one inch forward after a monster series of rain storms. Previously it was thought that the 20 ton cat would provide enough compaction to allow for this base footing. We are talking about being on about three feet of fill. Hmmm.

Plan B.

I was not looking forward to this. After getting confirming advice, the obvious had to be done. I had to sink a pier at the outer edge of the patio, where there was fill, down to terra firma and run beams along the perimeter to stabilize the entire area--fill or no fill. Oh man. In a perfect world the earlier advice I had gotten would have said "put in a pier while the big cat was doing the excavation". Ten minutes to make the hole and dig the footings. Now. Whew. It's not possible to get a big machine back down there, not to mention the additional cost of another delivery ($500). Plus the scheduling. You don't just call someone up and they show up. You get in line, usually a long line.

a frigate bird along with a "laughing" seagull...

The only solution was a small excavator. They have them, running about five feet wide. But I needed one with steel tracks. Most have rubber which can't make it up and down our property. It took about a week but I found three, two on St Thomas. The bids were all over the place from $1500 to $2200 for about a day's work or so they said. I am so depressed. I can't do it by hand, it would kill me!

I'm not sure how I found out while I was crying in my coffee, but Elvis, where I have some steel etc stored, was said to have a small steel tracked excavator. He did, at $95/hour plus delivery. Of course this being St John it would not be available for about a week or so. Who cares! I could spend the week cleaning out and patching the inside of one of the cisterns getting it ready for the thoroseal coats. Also I had to remove everything that would be in the way of the machine coming down the hill and squeezing its way around back. The timing is working. I should have plenty of time to get all my work done before I return to San Francisco on October 6th--including pouring all the concrete.

Meanwhile I overheard a conversation on the project above me while I was eating lunch. They had "too much dirt for too little hole". Oh really! I have got plenty of hole! The already existing driveway retaining wall could take everything they have and more. I told them that they could move all the fill onto our property at the top of the driveway on their dime. It saves them a lot of money. Otherwise they would have to hire dump trucks, find and pay someone to dump their fill. At the same time I also negotiated with the cat operator to move the fill down to back fill my retaining wall and then continue further down and back fill the foundation. Besides the good timing, I save on a delivery charge of $500 because the machine was already there. I dropped everything I was doing and spent the next three days dismantling the job site to make room for the big machine. Lumber, steel, water tanks, everything had to be moved. I was already going to do some of this for Elvis's machine. The rest of the time I spent directing the excavation/saving trees. Perfect timing.

The next day they spent moving the fill with a backhoe to the top of the driveway. You can see it in the corner of the this picture when the big cat showed up.

moving the fill down to the retaining wall....

Turning and moving down to excavate and back fill the foundation. You can see some of the plywood I had him hoist out of the hole before back filling started.

Rather than have one tall retaining wall we cut a shelf in. At the base of this wall will be the small wading pool. Landscaping on the top shelf.

the front yard....with the front door to be in the lower right.

Total cost $800, five hours at $160. Free fill and no delivery, sweet.

The following week Elvis showed up. Three and half hours later the work was done--$750 including delivery. Actually he had to come back one more time after I determined we had to go deeper when I was squaring up the hole--another $190. Now the hard part. Figuring out how to build it all, alone!

I left part of the retaining wall unfinished so he could get his machine down.

It looks ugly! I had to have plenty of plywood as a roadbed so that he could go over what he had previously done to make the hole deeper. Plus attempting to protect the bolts in the original footings for the deck columns. Ultimately with machine and by hand I went down about nine feet for the pier.

The work begins.

It took about a day to square up the hole and dig it down about two more feet. I put a four foot base to the pier. The pier itself is 2x2.


I squared everything to the existing foundation. Everything was done with 16' 2x4's. Don't forget I'm also the dumb end of the tape. Net, net everything came within a 1/4". Good enough for government work. Even if it hadn't turned out I could square it again when I pour the slab. Plum bobs and levels rule!

This is a good picture of the scope of the work. The pier is under the plastic tarp. It's at that corner, well actually in about four feet, where the footing for a deck column moved one inch. The covered deck is eight feet wide with the patio extending another four and half out to the forms and pier that I built.

This will be the side patio with no overhead deck. Lots of sun to dry out the place after heavy tropical rains.

That's all #5 rebar. Counting the cottage and retaining walls I have used about 550 20' bars. My Dewalt grinder has earned its keep. It has made at least 1500 cuts. By using stirrups in these 10" wide, two foot high footings I'm attempting to have a steel/concrete beam running the outside perimeter. Six bars and a 14"x5" stirrup every six inches. I had to build it all in place. No way I could lift six 20' lengths and stirrups and put it in the footing. What a pain in the ass to assemble in place. Almost three days for sixty feet. My logic, if the deck is going to sink I want it all to sink the same amount everywhere. It is not going to move away from the building as the original column footing did because when I pour the five/six inch deck slab I'll epoxy my rebar into the foundation slab every foot. That deck may go down but it is not going out. A professional would probably tell me I wasted my time.

I'll be pouring all the concrete to five or so inches short of the top of the forms. That way I'll only take down the inside of the forms on the patio and the upper retaining walls leaving the outside forms still up. This way I won't have to build new forms for the slab. I put a level line all around the inside to approximate the right level. After the pour while it is still wet I'll stick new rebar in every foot to tie it later to the slab. I'm also pouring the pier and its footing at the same time. Same with parts of the retaining wall. It's just such a pain to get a pumper truck and a concrete truck up the mountain. Not to mention the work and expense of bringing down 150' of pipe for pumping the concrete.

Now, the wait for the concrete. I'm scheduled for Wednesday October 3rd. I leave for SF the following Saturday. I could not get it sooner because Majestic ran out of concrete. Centerline Concrete said they could squeeze me in for my 21 yards the following week on Wednesday.

I hide under this during the down pours and to get a break from the sun. This is the one area where there is no shade. The hurricane season brings some heavy rains. The biggest drawback is it turns the site into a three, four day quagmire. Ankle deep mud. Slipping and sliding, falling on your ass at all time. Digging trenches etc is doing hard time. I have virtually no level ground. It's everything to keep from being speared by the rebar. Carrying 3/4 inch sheets of plywood is always entertaining, up or down the hills. My poor feet. One pair of boots has already rotted off. I keep the mosquitoes in check by running my pump after every hard rain draining any standing water. Clorox does the rest.

I had to wake this guy up when I needed my plank, totally docile....

I have spent a lot of time in the tropics starting all the way back in the early seventies. On land and sailing across the seas. I have a routine. It has worked flawlessly everywhere except for a night spent sleeping on a beach in French Polynesia on Moorea. That night a six-inch centipede crawled under me and later bit me on the back of my neck. Despite being sound of sleep it was like bolt of ligthning struck me. Blind as a bat I started smashing everything around me after I saw him move. The rage and the pain are not expressable. To this day if I see a centipede I kill it as pay back. The next morning with my head and neck throbbing, I stood up still cursing and swearing, and there low and behold was that little monster sleeping very comfortably in his original curled up position under where my neck had just been. I pulverized him. Say hello to the other time my routine failed.

This sucker crawled into my wet leather glove into the thumb hole. Like I said, I have a routine. With gloves, I twist them as if I were wringing them out. Which in this case I was, the sweat makes them feel like drenched rags. Anyway, twist away. Don't ask me how he survived, but survive he did. Trust me when I tell you this, the folks that say their sting is like a bee have never been stung by a scorpion. I know bees and wasps. I have had occassions where I have been seen running out of the woods with whole hives after me. One time Helen Dunn was vacuuming when I ran into her house trying to escape. Yup, she vacuumed them off me. I have been bit by more than 20 or 30 bees at the same time, so take my word for it when I tell you that the scorpion above is NOTHING like a bee sting. When I suck my hand in the glove all I could think was, whatever did that, if it does it again it will kill me. I kid you not, the pain was so incredibly instant that my heart skipped a beat. It was all I could do to just get the glove off. My thumb went instantly numb with a hammer like throbbing. I couldn't breath right. And then, like the centipede before, revenge set in. Picking up the glove, there he was comfortably nestled into the thumb slot. It actually took a lot to kill him. They are tough little creatures.


these are my wards when Roger and Fran go off island....they found the mud hole....

I spent the week waiting for concrete by finishing everything and spending time on the site nearby where they are in the stucco stage. A crew from Haiti and the Dominican Republic were making short work of it. Fast and good. I learned every secret I could. I spent hours watching and speaking spanglish with them. Products and techniques. Names and numbers. I can definitely put up the first two coats myself. A big money saver. Then I can get a couple of these guys on a weekend to put up the finish coat. As some payback, I taught the painter everything he didn't know.

If your wondering if all this work is worth it, it is. The best price on St John for poured concrete, forms, labor, the whole task is about $850 a cubic yard. To date we will have poured 91 yards for about 1/3 of that price. It takes me longer but the savings are there. All those containers I brought from Florida continue to pay off.

The excitement builds as my concrete should be coming in two days. There's something final about concrete. A stage is completed and a hurricance can't blow away three months of work.

Yes, you guessed it, the phone rang. Jeff, the pump truck operator broke down trying to get to another job. He's not sure if the axle will be repaired by Wednesday, maybe by Friday. He has the only truck available that makes the switchback turn coming up the mountain. Thrusday, Centerline concrete calls to tell me they are also now out of concrete. The barge from Puerto Rico has been delayed. There will be no concrete with no date certain. I'm getting on the plane. I rebooked the concrete for the 24th.

Why the pictures of the interior of the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas?

remember that's the interior....

That's a whole other story of cancelled plans. Anyway it led to me being stranded in Vegas overnight waiting for a flight to SF.

POKER!!!! a whole night of Texas hold'em. I pulled a 44 hour shift-- St John, Vegas on to SF. Who's better then me. Denise knew I was up to no good, she just didn't know what. I made enough to cover food, drink, taxis, tips etc and had $7.50 left over. Down to the felt as usual!

Finally, this entry is done. I get on a plane this Saturday to go back to the jungle.