The past weekend played host to a major event at LKW. We broke ground and poured the piers for the new shop. We ended up pouring 12 – 12″x30″ concrete piers to act as the foundation. The building, as said before, will be 20’x24′ so this will be structurally adequate. We did three rows of 4 piers and will begin setting the 6×6 posts and flooring this coming weekend. Exciting times.
Running the earth auger we rented at the local equipment rental. Quick tip: if your soil is rocky like ours, you will still need a spud bar and post hole diggers to clean the hole out. This hydraulic auger was hung up several times on each hole but it was nothing the steel spud bar couldn’t handle.
The better half of LKW hand mixing the Quikrete for the piers. It took nearly 30 – 80lb bags to get the job done.
All the piers have been poured, rebar set for the posts, and batter boards await. Good times.
Pro tip: It is of utmost importance to have your batter boards set and lines level and square. We used a line level and the 3-4-5 rule to verify our markers. The 3-4-5 rule is this: measure from where the lines meet out one leg of the string 3′ and mark (use a piece of masking tape to mark the string – you can see the blue tape in the photo above), then measure out the other leg of the other string from the same corner 4′ and mark (other piece of blue tape), next measure diagonally between these two string markings (from edge of tape to edge of tape). Your measurement should be 5′. If it isn’t then your strings aren’t square and need to be moved.