Thursday, October 25, 2018

Concrete pads for under double wide piers

The cheap skates that installed my double wide place concrete block on edge directly on the ground.   They are supposed to sit on pads.

The plan is to cast what amounts to beefy pavers  to act as a foot.

Each 80 lb bag of concrete yeilds .6 cubic feet of mix. I want to add lime and the net says to use 1:1 cement to lime.   By doing this I am cutting my sand and gavel ratio in 1/2.  Going to skip the lime.  Would only be a good idea if I was not using the quickcrete mix as I don't know whats in it for sure.  Just being careful.

An 80lb bag of quickcrete yields  ".6 cf " or ".6 x 1728" or 1037 ci of mix.
A 2x4 is 3.5" high.

If I make my form 22x22x3.5 inches it will take 1694 so two 80 lb bags will give a comfortable margin of 380 ci.  This gives me 2 inches on each side of an 18x18 inch pier. I would imagine this will dramatically reduce the psi on the ground and keep the house level longer.  Keeping it dry would help greatly.... but that is not always possible.

Still need to work out what to do on top of the pier.  If I start the bottom block row correctly I can come out with top block at a right angle to the supporting beams.  But I want to think about casting top caps maybe with angled tops.  Just thinking

For each 80 lb (36.3 kg) bag of QUIKRETE® Concrete Mix to be mixed, add approximately 6 pt (2.8 L) of fresh water to the mixer. Turn on the mixer and begin adding the concrete to the mixer. If the material becomes too difficult to mix, add additional water until a workable mix is obtained.

Forms are done.  Tomorrow we pour.

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Tomorrow is today:   This did not go well.  Under calculated the amount of mix by nearly 1/2.   Used X when I should have used Y sort of thing.  And the old mixer does not clean out well.    The mixer does not have a stop where I wanted the barrel tilted.   It fell and dumped the mix on the ground. Duh!

And worst of all my elbow feels like there is a spike through it.   Actually getting better now.  But no heavy lifting for a few days.   Sigh  Do you suppose moving the lathe apron and gearbox around has anything to do with it.  And the vibrating table with a chunk of concrete in the bottom does not help either.  Was thinking my back would be the part giving me grief.  Oh well.   This will give me some time to fix the head gasket on the DYT4000 and with that out of the shop maybe I can move the backhoe in and use it for a shop crane.  LOL not that it would be the first time.

Given that the block will be 1 cf and weight 150 lbs I will be casting them all in place.   I can do the outside ones by myself but will need someone to fill a tub/sled on a rope to pull the mix under the house.for the interior ones.  Maybe even make a tub on push mower wheels.

Casting them in place will also make it easier to get a good fit to the ground.  I am thinking, famous last words, it is level under there and I can mostly just set the from on the ground and pour. 


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