Weather: December daily Weather, Tis the Season, 1 by henryr10

henryr10 wrote:
37° and Rising.
It's warmer now than when we were working.
We had the Chiminea fired up all day.
Amazing the amount of heat they put out.
It should hit 55° tomorrow w/ Rain starting around 10AM.

We had a few sprinkles or sleetles today actually.
Here's todays agenda.... sorry if it's too much info but I know Sidney, and a few others, like the details.....
Tthe hard thing about Post and Beam type construction is getting the posts in ...
and in right.
Since this is an expansion and attaching to the House we only had to get one post in.
As it's the corner post that will be holding the header for a 10' sliding door and a 3' walk-in door..... it had to be set in perfectly.
I knew it would be a long process.
We first broke out the form from the pier and backfilled w/ tamped gravel and dirt.
I put a new pressure form around the top of the pier as I was afraid the new concrete would break out from the pressure of the anchor bolts.
It did crack a bit but no biggie.
Then I finished drilling out the mounting brackets I cut yesterday.
Then we mounted the Stainless Steel bottom plate to the 4 x 6 post.
This keeps the wood from contacting the concrete keeping it from rotting and the termites out.
All this took 3 hours....

Then we dry fit the post and marked the bracket holes on the pier.
Drilling the concrete and mounting the brackets actually didn't take too much time.
Our neighbor Jon stopped over to see how it was going.
I grabbed him to help level the post as I anchored it to the brackets.
It leveled up perfectly to the lines and is solid as a rock.
Soooo now we have the final, and most critical, piece of the addition done.
It was very time consuming and doesn't really seem to be worth two 1/2 days worth of work.
But the concrete pier and post are IN!
The rest is just cutting and nailing.

Here's the pier and the brackets and plate I fabricated
Ric