Pictures Courtesy of Roger Richard, John
Higgins and Larry Gomes
Story by Larry Gomes
After over a year of planning, ground was broken on the Jericho Warming Hut. Matt Godbout had his excavator trucked in to the junction of the Camp Loop and Scenic View trails. Then he walked his excavator up the Scenic View trail to the landing. Once there, he installed stakes to guide his excavation and then dug trenches along the outline of the building.
Warming Hut building side
marked out and ready for excavation with
Jericho Mountain in the background (6/7/11).
Matt digging out one of the side trenches for the building (6/17/11).
Trenches are dug and stone
(delivered to the site by Ross Trucking) was brought in to form a stable
base for the foundation piers. Note the vibrator in the right trench
that was used to compact the stone (6/17/11).
Adam from White Mountain Lumber
delivers a load of cement and other materials up to the site.
The truck made it up the steep road with no problems (6/17/11).
The foundation work was started on Saturday. First the crew built a frame to the exact outside dimensions of the cabin floor (see frame in background of picture). This task was made a lot easier because Roger brought pre-cut triangular corners that could be quickly screwed into the frame to square it up.
The frame was then lowered into the trenches on top of the plastic big-foot bases. The big-foot bases were then lined up with the outside edges of the frame. Matt then used his excavator to dump stone on top of the bases to hold them in place.
Once all the bases were secured with stone, the frame was removed and trenches were hand dug in the stone for perforated drainage pipe. Water was constantly running into the back of the trenches during this entire operation, but most of it leached out through the stone.
Larry looks down into the
trench to make sure the water is flowing. In the background
is the frame that was used to line up the eight big-foot bases for the cabin
foundation.
John prepares a big-foot base
for cement. Note the stone that was put in to hold the base in position.
Also note the rebar that has been installed at the top of the base. This rebar
will eventually be welded together
to prevent any of the foundation bases from moving during winter freezes and
spring thaws.
Roger pours cement into one of
the Sonna tubes. Note the duct tape wrapped around the seams of the tubes
that was needed to keep them from splitting apart. Evidently we got the
light duty tubes instead of the heavy
duty tubes by mistake. Also note how each tube was stabilized using a
collar that fits around the tube and
braces fastened to stakes hammered into the ground.
With no running water on site,
the crew had to improvise. Here John uses a small battery operation pump
plugged
into his 12-volt accessory outlet on his ATV to fill water jugs. These
jugs are then strapped into the trailer and
brought back to the site. One trailer load of jugs held enough water to
get through an entire day of cement mixing.
Larry is mixing up on of the
last bags of cement for the weekend. He mixed over 80 bags during the
course of
the weekend. After it was mixed, the cement was poured into buckets so it
can be easily poured into the big-foot
bases and Sonna tubes. The cement mixer was driven off a portable
generator.
At the end of the day, the crew
wired in sections of rebar to connect all of the posts together.
These sections will be welded together later on in the week. Note the
drainage pipe
that was installed to drain water from the trenches over the edge of the cliff.
Foundation bolts were installed at the top of each cement piling to hold the perimeter beams in place.
Here is the crew at the end of a long weekend. From left to right is John
Higgins,
Larry Gomes, Eric Johnson and Roger Richard.
All eight foundation piers have
been poured and stabilized with bracing. They will be
left to dry for a week before being backfilled.