Week #1: Excavation and footings.

After the move was completed, and the camp was (somehow) set up, I could focus on the cabin:

The next tasks were to finish laying out the location of all the footings, finish the excavation and pour the footings (My girlfriend was over during the weekend, and helped me with all of these tasks).

Excavating the first feet was really hard as the surface is full of rocks that make using a shovel impossible. Once this first layer was removed, the soil is more sandy and excavation is not as hard. Unfortunately sand does not have a great bearing capacity, so the size of the footings was increased (from 14"x14" to "16"x16" - it does not sound like much, but this increases the capacity of the footing by almost 40%!)- I did not use the forms that I was planning to use, instead I just filled the bottom of the hole with concrete up to 6 inches from the bottom - Hopefully the extra concrete that I brought will be enough.

Each footing has two pieces of rebar with a 4 inch hook inside to footing. A 2x6 and nails was used to hold the two pieces of rebar in place while we poured the concrete.



Since the foundations are fairly simple and the amount of concrete is small, we did not use a concrete mixer, we used the old bucket and shovel method - Mixing concrete by hand under the sun at 30+ C is something that I don't recommend to anyone!!

By the time four of the footings had been poured, we were both exhausted, and had just enough time to clean up, go for a swim in the ocean and wait for the water taxi that would take us back to Vancouver... I'll be coming back next Wednesday and the target for next week is to have the foundations completely finished and maybe make some progress on the posts and main beams!!!