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A recent job

AzIron

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the top was just a sewer tap for a new house all day job for 45 mins of work but i am not complaining we swung all the dirt in a 10 wheeler and slurried to back fill i had to wait like 4 hours for the slurry so i could set the road plates

the bottom we got a call from and underground company looking for a hammer apparently there were none for rent immediately available in the valley so we went over and did it they poured the manhole box for a storm drain a foot to high so they had to take it all out and redo it i was surprised to find number 5 re bar and 3 foot thick walls glad i took the 2000lbs hammer
 
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Birken Vogt

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Grass Valley, Ca
the other thing that was weird was the engineer called out the plans for the house footing to be over excavated 6 inches and then compacted because he said since half the pad is on natural and the other half i built up he was worried about everything settling equally. i will say this if they have settling there problem wont be that its equal LOL.

Has anybody heard if this is a normal engineering practice published anywhere, or did he just think this up himself?

the other thing that suprised me was that the steps in the plans were not declared in increments that work with block so we had to adjust that. we used to dig for a concrete company years ago the owner taught me a lot about concrete and block work so when we dig we make our steps in increments divisible by 4 so the block guys dont have to trim block and the concrete guys dont have to adjust the footing up with extra mud to work better for block. it pays to know what the trades following you need so they dont have a mess to deal with

In framing the concrete guy would usually lay out the j-bolts that way, so that they were at the proper intervals, not landing under studs and double them up where bottom plates would splice. However, he frequently got to drinking on the job at 6am and then they would be all wrong and we would have to cut and drill new ones, never ending source of fun.
 

AzIron

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Has anybody heard if this is a normal engineering practice published anywhere, or did he just think this up himself?

i have never heard of over exing a footing to fill it back and compact it so its the same as an engineered pad but i found out later that the engineer who detailed the house was in training so i figure he was just to smart on paper for his own good

architects and engineers make me laugh cause they make these extensive details and then tell the owner its nothing to put an rv garage in the side of that mountain and then you tell the owner to dig out do pad and backfill the walls for his garage will be over 50 thousand just in dirt work and they always say well the architect said it wouldnt take much.

az has a lot of issues with expansive soil especially if the pad company screws up so all track houses now are built as post tension slabs to eliminate settling. but there were some big class actions over the years do to expansive soil so engineers tend to overcompensate witch has cost unfathomable amounts of money over the years. we dug footings on a school were half the footing were in solid rock and the other half were in the fill zone of the pad. the footings in the fill zone had to be excavated to natural and filled back with abc all the way to bottom of footing there were spots that were 13 feet deep 4 foot wide and filled back to just 2 foot deep.
all that so there was no chance of liability for settling. what did that cost?
 

AzIron

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the first 2 pics are of a septic tank hole i was 2 days into it and not half done when i took the pics and the builder pulled the plug said we were to expensive i just laughed at him i was loaded up before he could get his pickup out of the driveway. the rock in that area is some really hard stuff in spots 2000lbs hammers may not scratch it when i was in high school me and my grandpa did a septic around the corner it took two weeks to hammer for the tank and to get to were the leach field would go

the bottom pic is footings for apartments these jobs are always a train wreck you never know what plumbing or conduit you will rip up nothing is ever deep enough and its never where its supposed to be the last 4 jobs i have been on with this concrete company the plumbers beat theme there so we always have to work around all the vents and risers. moving your dirt out of the floor is a joke usually your best off to gopher dig it out of the building to were you have room to pick it up
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AzIron

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good size custom house has about 6 bathrooms all were 7 foot deep coming out of the house to the garage level its a good thing finish floor was 9 feet above the curb and 12 feet above the sewer tap

home builders and there fences there is never room to work at least the deere has a really good parking brake cause digging through cleech with your outriggers up is slow going doing it on a slope is what i call adventure digging
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AzIron

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The deere swings faster it has way better feeling in the controls as far as feed back and the cat dealer was becoming a pain to deal with that said there are a lot of things about the cab design and layout on the deere I would change the biggest 2 is the back window and the rops design you can't get the window out of the way no matter where you put it and the split post rops make visibility a little tricky sometimes
 

AzIron

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I really am not a fan of the new backhoes that cat or deere is making maybe I am bias but cat had solid machines when they made the c and the d series they perform well had great visibility and hold together. Dad consulted to cat on b c and d series backhoes so maybe I am bias but I can crawl on a 12000 hr 416 c and swing more dirt in a day than I can with any new backhoe I have tried so far
 

d9gdon

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Feb 12, 2010
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central texas
I did some work in eastern Pennsylvania last year and noticed that most of their septic system leach fields were above ground mounds because of the hard rock there. It costs so much less to build one above ground than what it costs to hammer one out. These house were out in the country and had plenty of room though.
 

AzIron

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I did some work in eastern Pennsylvania last year and noticed that most of their septic system leach fields were above ground mounds because of the hard rock there. It costs so much less to build one above ground than what it costs to hammer one out. These house were out in the country and had plenty of room though.

They would have had to put a pump into get it to the tank they didn't want to and that was a really high end area that house will be over 3 million another 12000 to put a tank in won't be nothing

But I would agree it's expensive that will be an alternative system tho there is no perk in that ground it's solid rock
 

Jakebreak

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Dec 5, 2016
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Bakersfield Ca
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hey take it easy on the plumbers lol it makes my life easier when we go in before the footings cause then I don't have to worry about putting them back and cleaning them but if the plumber did his homework and can do it we always try and stay below footings or go in after their poured and tunnel underneath or sleeve them but if we do go in first I try and lay bury tape and be there when there digging to help identify the pipe as always nice work that looks hard to dig I would get frustrated on that
 

AzIron

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hey take it easy on the plumbers lol it makes my life easier when we go in before the footings cause then I don't have to worry about putting them back and cleaning them but if the plumber did his homework and can do it we always try and stay below footings or go in after their poured and tunnel underneath or sleeve them but if we do go in first I try and lay bury tape and be there when there digging to help identify the pipe as always nice work that looks hard to dig I would get frustrated on that

It's a headache there is pipe in the air in your ditch to dig around it's just a pain but worse is there is always 10 people watching you dig at half throttle telling you to dig faster but that stuff will make an operator out of anybody that sticks with it but probably the worst part is trying to position to dig cause you will have to set up over a vent or riser to get square and then find a place to cast dirt
 

Jakebreak

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It's a headache there is pipe in the air in your ditch to dig around it's just a pain but worse is there is always 10 people watching you dig at half throttle telling you to dig faster but that stuff will make an operator out of anybody that sticks with it but probably the worst part is trying to position to dig cause you will have to set up over a vent or riser to get square and then find a place to cast dirt
I hear you it’s hard with a hoe I have done it plenty of times 95% of our rough ins we dig it’s all with a mini and skid steer their easier and more maneuverable on the pad than a hoe especially when jumping ditches and working around other people’s stuff we still use a hoe for that work on occasion
 

AzIron

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20180302_103909.jpg this is by far the rockiest pad i have ever seen it took a week to dig this house it should have only taken 2 days maybe 2 and a half the footings were supposed to be 16in wide most were almost 2 1/2 feet a lot of those rocks were bigger than the bucket and the concrete forman said there mud order was over double 20180226_093134.jpg 20180226_093231.jpg just some plumbing on a house and jumping the stem to head out of the house20180309_131101.jpg this one is a "remodel" they strip it to slab and add on to the size but permits are cheaper and there is no pad requirement if part of the house remains so to get the new plumbing in they saw cut the floor and we dig it. this is dads hoe he had hammered a footing out from the old floor but with out messing up the floor he couldnt get the corners in the bottom of the ditch so he cleared the big stuff with his bucket and swept it with the coupler otherwise it was to tight
 
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AzIron

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20180307_104641.jpg 20180307_104529.jpg 20180307_104655.jpg 20180309_100158.jpg just more footings on this house that we started last April finally doing flat work footings for the house itself and not retaining walls except for the last picture it will be a retaining wall but will also be a stem wall for the house it will come up 5 feet

in the second pic were the laser is set up next to the wall is the same place i took pics of that walls footing in post #1 that thing was 10 feet wide with the 2x2 foot keyway it ran that size across almost the entire back of the pad they put 120 yards into just pouring the footing.

in the bottom pic is the cassida in the background and the footings for that are in posts#7 and 8 again really big footings (8 feet wide) but finish floor of the cassida was 11 feet above top of footing in the lowest part
 
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AzIron

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1010171346.jpg 20180307_104515.jpg 20180307_104641.jpg 20180307_104825.jpg just before and after pics in the first 3 use the 2 cactus as reference point there in all the pics

the last pic if you look up the hill and see the fence they just started that house one of my customers is doing the concrete so we will see if we get to go up there there is a 25 ton excavator a 4 yard loader and a backhoe up there cutting pad they will be there for 2 months before anything else starts there is a lot of rock to hammer and the house is supposed to sit right at the peak of the ridge
 
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CM1995

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Interesting that the retainer wall is CMU and what appears to be the house foundation wall is concrete.
 

AzIron

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Interesting that the retainer wall is CMU and what appears to be the house foundation wall is concrete.

cm its a mixed bag on these walls but the poured wall in the last pic on post 36 is the garage wall and its holding back the wall above it that said a lot of flat work will have a poured stem thats 4 inches thick and about 18 inches tall top of stem is finish floor other houses will use block to form the outside foundation it varies you only find stems on custom houses all the track houses are post tension now post 34 has pics with a poured stem that used to be the standard on everything but not any more

there is a lot of 5 foot poured wall with block stacked on top the poured wall has a crap load of rebar in it and big rebar

most lots stick to just block walls they are a lot cheaper to put up but the hill on the lot was a 2 to 1 its and the size of the house takes up most of the disturb-able foot print so it doesnt leave a lot of room for 3 and 4 wall lifts so they beefed up the walls to make them taller
 

AzIron

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started a pad job for a custom house good size pad house has 10000 under roof and that doesnt include the drive way lot has over 4000 yards of export so it will take a minute to do.

got the drive way grubed and trails in for the cactus haulers you have to think ahead just a little so they have a good trail to square up from on a side with no arms then they replant them outside the disturbed boundary
the cactus are protected so you cant kill them if you do you have to replace them and they are not cheap the cactus that require a tilt truck for start at 600 bucks just to replant them on the job

and no the backhoe is not mine its the cactus guys
 
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AzIron

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cut a spot for the trucks to turn around in and made a bench so we can start hauling dirt next week trying the section in the third pic were the hose runs across is still 4 foot high and that is the first step of the pad there is an upper section that is 4 foot higher it has 11 foot to cut at the highest point to get grade and then the drive way has a 20 foot cut to get to grade at the highest point

i put a test hole in the driveway at the highest point after 8 feet it turned to solid rock so there is at least 10 feet worth of rock to hammer out we will be here a little while later this week the surveyor will put the wall corners down for the lower retaining wall so we can get it started so we can finish building the pad
 
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