We started to ‘pour’ the footings for the back stairs last weekend. Well, it was more like I got lots of blisters on my soft engineer’s hands by shovel-mixing concrete.
Because the back stairs are the second exit from our upstairs unit, I don’t want them to be out of commission for a long time. I’m leaving the old stairs up until I’ve got all the footings done for the replacement stairs. I’ll also pre-cut as much of the framing for the replacement stairs as I can so that once we tear down the rotten old stairs, I’ll be able to replace them quickly. That’s the plan.
Figuring that the concrete that’s all over the back yard would be thin and easy to break out, I first tried to chip the concrete out with a sledge and cold chisel. Two hours and two blisters later, with only one footing chipped out, I learned the error of my ways: The rented electric jackhammer did the remaining eight, and the concrete in a corner of the garden, in the same amount of time.
Being an engineer is a handicap when it comes to foundations. Once I started with putting reinforcing steel in the footings, well, I started figuring out how I could bend the bars so that they would hold their position. Hence the funky shapes!
Test-fitting the reinforcing (left), and with the formwork made out of plywood. OK, they didn’t need to be sloping, but I like it.
And then the inspection. Bella seems to see something wrong on the footing: I think she thinks I don’t have enough concrete cover between the soil and the rebar. Or maybe she likes the smell of the string. Difficult because she never wrote a field report.
So after my fun experience with chipping out the concrete, I’d planned to rent a concrete mixer. But it doesn’t fit in the car. So I got more blisters, and an aching back, by shovel mixing 16 60lb sacks of concrete to pour three footings. I’m going to see if I can strap the mixer onto the car somehow…