By 10:00 this morning Jim's crew had finished the base for the masonry wall. Now they are filling the blocks with cement about every four feet. I thought they needed a cement truck for this, but actually they mix the concrete on-site.
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| The base for the masonry wall is at center. |
Jim moved to Alpena from Ann Arbor nearly 30 years ago. At that time he found that standard block basement walls, only a few years old, were already bowing-in under pressure from the surrounding soil. Uncorrected, these walls would eventually collapse. To stabilize the walls he decided to pour cement around re-bar, thereby creating piers every few feet. That adds to his cost, but yields a wall which can withstand the soil load.
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| Reinforcing piers are created by filling the block with cement around re-bar. |
We're having spectacular early fall weather here — blue sky, sunny with a few clouds, temperatures in the low 70s. Our rain has come mainly in the evenings, clearing out by dawn. It could stay like this for weeks, if I had my choice! And after dinner last night there was hardly a sound on and around Lake Esau, which is typical of the area after Labor Day. •••
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