This was taken Wednesday...
This pile of sticks was Wednesday, after the guys were gone. They assured me they could burn them right up in no time. Yea right... It has been really wet, these sticks were from live trees, and a lot of them really big stumps...
Thursday was Thanksgiving... (hope you had a great one!) So no work that day (actually not true...my wife worked her tail off while entertaining one of the kids, and my daughter and I surveyed the lot for several hours, trying to nail down the locations of the corners). We were scheduled to burn on Friday. The burn permit is through the HOA, but controlled by Texas State rules. It is about 15 pages of rules, all designed for every possible contingency... Like what if I am burning and the gravitational pull of the moon pulls a stick out of my pile... Anyway, I thought it would be pain to get a burn permit, but the HOA rep had it all laid out and got it approved very quickly. I did have to call county emergency dispatch this morning, as well as the HOA themselves, which makes good sense.
So, the guys show up and spring into action... The dozer works the perimeter, and keeps things tidy, while the "claw" expertly seperated the sticks into 3 piles, small, medium, and heavy enough to flatten your pickup truck. The whole time they are doing this, they use the "claw" to shake off all the dirt from the sticks. They start the fire, and feed it with the claw. I was amazed at how fast the whole thing went, and by noon there wasn't much to do, but twiddle around the perimeter and tidy that up. The heat from the fire was pretty intense... Even melted the dozer operators foam cup he had beside him on the dozer... I didn't check his eyebrows...
I, on the other hand, took the opportunity to do some housekeeping on brush and dead trees not just in the perimeter, but all over the place, trying to clear some sightlines and space where future stuff will go. My normal job is a cushy easy sit down job, so by tonight I am bruised, scratched, burnt, sore, dehydrated, and tired. I probably cut 10 pickup loads of brush, dead limbs, and dead trees, some of which were not small. But it was nice to take advantage of the fire and burn crew, because it will never again be this easy to get rid of stuff. I feel the day was a success, because I didn't get run over by a bulldozer, and we are ready for constructing the slab on Monday. The next step is to remove the top 6 inches of dirt, which has all the organic material, roots, etc, and push that off to the sides. Then, they "proof roll" the pad site to see if it supports the roller well. If not, they have to dig out those areas. Next, a whole herd of dump trucks (these guys call them bobtails) come in and start dumping "select fill" . Select fill is dirt that has been selected for it's quality to do a particular task. In this case, they want dirt that will hold the weight of the structure through the bottom of the beams, and dirt that won't overly expand and heave the slab into pieces. They talk about a low "plasticity index," which they shorten to slang of PI. I play along and act like I know what they are talking about. The do this so they can charge a lot more money for this dirt. I would love to be cheap here, and do the minimum to just get by (most builder houses certainly would), but a little more money here is probably insurance against having some really nasty problems down the road. My civil engineer made the comment that he had never seen an engineered concrete slab fail, however, when the pad fails beneath it the slab will follow...always.
OK, there is the lot at the end of the day... Incredible. The flag down by the chairs is the front right corner of the house, our master bath, and the flag to the right is the master bedroom. The picture was taken from atop the excavator, as it was sitting in what will be the driveway apron. And that is all for today. This tired body needs to be horizontal. My hats off to all those guys who do this and more every day.
