I had been under the weather Sunday night, and not feeling any better Monday morning called in sick at the office. No rest for the weary though, Katie had to be driven to school. After she was dropped off at 7:30 I drove down to the lot, and found John and his crew hard at work mucking out column pads again. Went to talk to John briefly, who said he would be on site for the inspector no matter what. He had taken quite the tongue-lashing from his bosses over the weekend over the failures during the previous week to get those footings poured. Nice to see that Elite is buckling down intending to get this job done. Too bad this kind of effort wasn't put through three weeks ago.
Went home to shower, and returned to the lot at 8:15. Everyone was gone. Terrific.
Called up the city inspection department and asked for the inspector. He came on the phone. He seemed audibly annoyed once I told him where I was calling from. Seems he has been seriously displeased with the way Elite has been handling the inspections - nobody on site for two straight inspections probably didn't help his mood. I assured him as the general contractor we would get this thing done right, and I'd definitely be there when he came back. That was scheduled for 9:30. He told me he wanted the column pads dried out, and stoppers on the ends of the garage footings. The garage footings are supposed to have stoppers installed at the ends to completely close them off so that there was something to stop the concrete from falling into the pit, and they were missing on Friday. He hadn't written it down, but clearly this would be a problem. We hung up.
I looked at the garage footings. No stoppers. Sigh. Not knowing if John would return, I grabbed scrap materials and spikes and set up the stoppers myself. Not much fun jumping all the way into the bottom of the pit on a bad knee, but somehow I did it. I couldn't do anything with whatever water was remaining in the pit, so I just had to hope it wouldn't be a problem. I sat on the tailgate of my pickup and waited.
9:07. John returned without the crew, whom he had taken to another job site. I told him the inspector would be along in twenty minutes, and there was still water in the corner under the kitchen. That puddle was a foot and a half deep. Nonetheless he went to go dig it out.
9:40, the inspector arrived looking particularly dyspeptic. I suppose that would happen on your third trip to a site. Nonetheless he was pleased to see people there to actually talk to. He went up, looked around, nitpicked a small cave-in against the form in the southwest corner, and that a garage footing stopper needed to be pushed out a little further. But then he gave his blessing to pour. Hallelujah, we can resume work. John said he'd be back at 1:00 to start pouring. I went home.
We went to the lot at 1:00. The whole crew was there now and crushed stone was being dumped in our driveway. They were waiting for equipment to pour the stone. Elite had rented a conveyor from their concrete supplier, Gleason Redi-Mix of Racine, because their own conveyor was on another job.
Eventually the conveyor arrived, and a huge monster of a truck it was. I was asked if they could set up on the next door lot, and I told them it would be fine. Easier than driving up on the still-steep hill that the excavators had cleared near the front stoop. And finally the work began.
The stone to fill the pit was poured first. When that was done, there was a short break. Then the concrete truck arrived.
And just like that, it was done. All that stress, just to get this bit complete. We went home around suppertime, pleased and tired.
