Building Update

Apparently the building being built next to where I live is not very high on the priority scale. In the spring they were busy putting down piers and at the rate they were going I assumed they would at least have the first floor poured, but they didn’t. In fact they had another machine on sight that was literally pushing twelve inch concrete piers at least forty feet, maybe further, into the ground. That job is now done, the machine is gone and a whole pile of used lumber to be used for forms has arrived. Hopefully, before I leave this fall there will be something above ground to show you.

For those readers who have a construction interest I thought I would show you some shots of the machine. I wish I had gotten better pictures but I just didn’t seem to be in the right place at the right time.

When I left in the spring they were in the process of uncovering the big piers at the edge of the building and preparing them for the beam to be poured on top of them. It must have taken them all summer to uncover all of them and prepare them.

When I came back this fall I found this large very heavy machine on the building site. There sure are a lot of steel weights hanging on its sides.

Underneath it are four rectangular feet that allow it to crawl around and level itself. In each foot are hydraulic cylinders to move the machine back and forth on its foot. Using the feet in proper sequence, the machine can move all over the site. On the end is the hydraulic press that can be moved the length of the machine. The concrete pier is griped in a vise as the two hydraulic cylinders force the vice and thus the pier into the ground. It really is quite an operation and has left me wondering why all these small piers.

The above picture is a shot of the machine viewed from the side.

Machines built by man don’t last as long as things made by God. One of the hydraulic cylinders assemblies had to be taken off and repaired.

One or two pushes into the earth and another pier section would be added.