Today the foundation to our foundation was put in. First thing this morning this crew showed up and need to get their tractor down into the hole. Our contractor says he's never seen it done like this, but you can get the general idea here. They backed the tractor up nice and slow until it all shifted downward. It went very smoothly(much better than any of us guessed it would). They had clearly done it before.
So here you can see they are working on the first pier. The Pier is a solid steel rod with an auger on the bottom that drills down until it hits bedrock. In our case that was about 35 feet down. The steel rods get added on in 5 foot sections.
About 10 feet down so far on this one, still real easy going.
You can see here that once they hit the bedrock they keep turning the steel rod a bit until it has the correct amount of torque for maximum strength. It seems unintuitive that twisting the metal strengthens it instead of weakening it(it twists all 35 feet of the steel). The idea seems to be that the rod has equal support on all sides. Leave a comment if you can explain it better.
Surprisingly(or not), Uncle Seth proved to be more interesting to the boys than the work outside was. I, on the other hand, could hardly tear myself away from watching. I suspect the boys' attention will be captured again late next week when the cement truck will expand its boom up and over the house to pour the concrete for the foundation. Plus, Uncle Seth will be gone, so they will be looking for entertainment! :D
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