My wall is bigger than Trump's wall...Part 1

After about 1.5 years of renovating the house (I added a cedar covered porch in the back, expanded a single car garage to a two car garage in the front and worked on  the boat house) while holding a full time job I found myself at the point where I needed to work on landscaping.  Since I live by a canal which connects to the sensitive banana river I am required by the department of natural resources to build a swail.

A swail is a shallow depression and in my case it is about 5 feet wide 60 feet long and 3" deep.  Because of the additional square footage, there is the concern that the runoff from the roof will go into the river.  The swail helps capture the runoff before it goes into the river so that the water is filtered by the sand before it enters the canal.

However, there is  steep slope in the yard due to the fact that the house is about 5 feet above the water level in the canal and the house only sits 20 feet away from the water.   Because of this the swail becomes ridiculously deep on the house side in order for it to have a level base. 

Another problem that I as well as many other homeowners around the area have is that the seawall is made of corrugated sheet material that allows dirt to pass through its seams.  Over time this results in a watery trench behind the wall.  Its a tripping hazard and the steep slope near the seawall doesn't help.

Many home owners in the neighborhood have put in new vinyl seawalls that are as much as three feet higher than the old seawall.   The u shaped vinyl pieces are placed in the water and sunk down into the sand with a jet pump.  The vinyl is then capped off at the top and the wall is anchored to the land by using tie bars attached to cement pads located 12' from the seawall buried in the sand.  The cement pad and tie bar combination is known as a dead man.  Then fill dirt is placed behind the new wall and the old wall is covered up.  The end result is very nice and seems very durable.  The only problem is the water becomes somewhat inaccessible due to the seawalls new height.  But the homeowners are prepared for global warming!  The price of such an installation is $210 per linear foot or about $16,800 for the 80' of seawall I have.  I think those professionals should work a step into the design to allow easier access to the water.

Below is an example of some typical seawalls used to replace the 70 year old corrugated asbestos seawall that was originally put in the neighborhood.  The one on the left uses pressure treated wood and the other uses vinyl sheets.  Note the height of the vinyl seawall.

My seawall seemed fine even though it was 70 years old.  There was a 5 foot long horizontal crack in one section of the seawall and the seawall was tilting out at the bottom about 6 inches but even so it was good for another 50 years.  However it did leak sand.  One method that is commonly used around here to fix the leak is to use filter cloth.  This black plastic holey cloth lets water pass but not sand.  The idea is to dig a trench behind the seawall and run a 6 foot wide filter cloth sheet all the way along the 80' of seawall and then back fill with sand  Theoretically the idea should work.  However, for one reason or another the filter cloth over time slips down into the ground and you end up with the same leaky sand problem.  For my seawall this was done about 15 years ago.

When sand leaks out in one spot around the seawall a common method for a quick fix is to throw bags of dry cement in the hole.   This theoretically should work and the cement should harden an plug the leak.   I personally unloaded several bags of cement in the holes that appeared along the seawall as I was living in the house over the years but it always seemed that it did not really fix the problem or if it did it was temporary.

There are many other ways to fix the leaky sand problem on seawalls.  However I had a land height problem as well.  I considered putting in a new vinyl seawall myself, but I had two issues.  I would have to remove and redo the dock and there was coquina rock next to the seawall making it hard to sink the vinyl sheets.  Because of this and the pricey cost of using a contractor to do it, I decided to build a 1.5' cement retaining wall behind the seawall with a deep footer all by myself.   I don't think anyone in the area has approached the problem this way.  So it ended up being new territory to explore and new methods to develop.  Little did I know I was in for some really shitty work.

To be continued in the next blog

Happy Building!

The Dr

Cinder block work is so easy

Often times do it yourselfers will call in the professionals to help them along with a construction project.  There are many reasons for the request such as the task is just beyond and above the do it yourselfer's skill or abilities or maybe time is an issue and the do it yourselfer doesn't want to spend the rest of his life working on the project.  A lot of the times the reason is waaaa don't wanna...

So lets talk about the definition of DIY.  Really its kind of like the term made in America.   The Made in America mark is a label indicating the product is "all or virtually all" made in the United States.  Sounds simple right?  But wait it is a little more complicated.  Consider a car.   An “American” car sold in in the USA may have rolled off an assembly line in Tennessee with parts made in a dozen different countries.  As long as 75% of the manufacturing costs are US related then the car can be considered made in America.  This link is kinda funny and yet depressing at the same time.

The term DIY has the same problem.  For the blog I have been defining DIY as not using contractors.  For example dad and I made the concrete slab for garage ourselves.  But we did not mix the concrete ourselves. we did not drive the cement truck over to the house ourselves.  We did not cut down the trees and mill our own wood for the forms.  We did not grow the trees to get the wood.  We did not make the truck to haul the cement.  And it goes on an on.  So when you are a do it yourselfer you stand on the shoulders of many others in this great vast and cooperative society which allows us to do great things and then take all the credit for it.  I found this link kinda funny.

For the garage addition, dad and I decided to get the block work done by professionals.  Our reason was we wanted to speed things up.  On one hand I was a little disappointed in our decision since I would not be learning how to do block work but on the other hand I was excited that I would not have to wait three months to finish the block work phase of the project.

To do this we looked at the building departments list of licensed contractors and made a few calls.  We got a few estimates and went with the cheapest block contractor.

To prepare for the block builders, dad and I had to trim the tails off the roof trusses to get it ready for the girder truss.   The face of the girder truss had to interface with the cut off tails which required the tails to be flush to the girder truss.  To cut the tails accurately we used a string line along all the truss tails so that all cuts were the same length  This allowed for the Simpson brackets to be securely fastened to the old truss ends and the new girder truss.

 It turns out that a colleague of mine at work had hired some professionals to make an addition that required the same truss tail trimming task that dad and I were faced with.  "The professionals" did not use a string and naturally the tails came out all different lengths.  What a rookie mistake!  In the end new lumber had to be scabbed on the old trusses so that the girder truss could be connected to the old trusses in an acceptable manner.

The picture below shows an example of what we did.  Also shown in the picture is the truss repair we had to do to two of the trusses.  The trusses were damaged when the front wall was ripped down.  To repair the truss properly we contacted a professional engineer and he gave us some drawings to follow for $300.  The repair basically consisted of plywood,  southern yellow pine two by fours, construction adhesive and lots of nailing in a prescribed pattern.

   

Once the roof was trimmed the block builders came in and did their thing.   They were quite quick having the whole job done in three days.

Some of the key components of the job include the rebar installation and the lintel.  In the above picture the lintel is a cement and rebar filled steel beam that supports the wall and roof above for the garage opening.  The lintel was empty when the block layers placed it which is in contrast to a preformed concrete lintel which would be too heavy lift without a crane of sorts.  Below the rebar along the bond beam is shown.

 

If you look close you can see the rebar in the hollow metal lintel in the picture below.

 

In addition to the bond beams columns of the wall were filled with cement and rebar.  Below shows the inspection holes in the cells used to show that cement made it all the way to the bottom of the wall when it is filled.  You can see the rebar sticking up from the slab and the rebar that is tied to it to go up the wall.

 

The block layers were quick and the work they did was on the rough side.  One thing they did to make the wall was to cut a hole in the existing roof so they could slide some rebar down in on of the cells of the wall.  Because they cut through the flashing it caused me a major headache down the road.  In fact I repaired the roof five times in that location to try to get it ti stop leaking.   I think the most valuable lesson I learned from the repair was not to nail through the flashing and to be one with water flow when fixing a leak. Ommmmm.

Another shortcut they did was to use steel (instead of galvanized) bolts to anchor the wood goal posts that the garage door rails are fastened to.  In the end they got rusty sitting outside so when I was ready to use them I had to wire brushed them off and spray Rustoleum galvanizing compound on them.

So the question is did I save anything when I hired a contractor to do the work for me?  Surprisingly yes.  The reason being is that I was acting as a general contractor.  Typically general contractors charge 10 to 15 percent on top of the whole project cost.   The cost of putting in 47 feet of cinder block wall was $2850.

So about $430 dollar was saved.  Cue the cash register sound.

Happy Building!

The Dr