Well we have "lift off" or in other words "the permit has landed". On Monday the Building inspector called with some minor questions that needed clarifying, and by Wednesday morning I was advised I could start booking tradespeople as the permit was approved and just needed final signatures. Well that was good news. On Wednesday and Thursday started firming up dates for the initial tradespeople and on Friday I picked up the physical permit. After going over their notes and extra requirements looks like I did pretty well on my design and calculations. So on Sept 24th I'll be a very happy camper as I watch the excavator from Cotton Inc start clearing and digging. Then the work begins. The hope is that the Framer will start on the 20th of Oct and the Roofer in the first week of Nov. I've also arranged for Plumber to hopefully come out last week of Oct for the underground stuff and the HVAC will most likely start second or third week of Nov. This also meant the bankbook is a little lighter as the deposit cheques started going out. Oh well the price of building a house.

Nothing really happened at the building site other than keeping the grass and weeds trimmed. Had a meeting out there with the coordinator from Cotton Inc to look over the property so they could plan their course of action. That really left me with very little to do this week. However we did manage to get one thing done. I will have a cold storage that will have a slab poured on top as well as a deck surface over this. I will need to support the deck rim joist against the end of this slab. So I decided I would need some special anchor bolts. Normal anchor bolts of course go straight up and down. You insert the "J" portion in the concrete wall and leave the threaded portion out sufficient length for the sill plates. In my case this will be 4" as I will be having a double sill plate. However I did not want a straight pin coming out of the slab as support for the deck rim joist. So I bought seven 16" anchor bolts with the intention of having a 90degree bend placed in them so they could be inserted in the concrete wall and then stick out for the rim joist. My initial plan was to get a local person who has a bit of a machine shop do the work for me. However he got busy I presume getting ready for a trip overseas and never called me back. So while sitting on the front porch looking at my truck it occurred to me that if I removed the trailer hitch ball there was a hole in the receiver that was just a bit larger than the anchor bolt and maybe with some judicious heat and force I could bend them myself. Unfortunately I do not have a large enough or strong enough vise setup in Mom's garage to do this. Well that was a great plan however trailer hitch ball had other ideas and didn't want to come loose. So on to plan B. When I was preparing plan A I had brought out a concrete block to be used as a support for the end of the anchor bolt. After looking at the block I realized that if I placed a spacer in one of the holes there was just enough room for the "J" end of the anchor bolt and the height was just the correct height for where the bend in the anchor bolt needed to be.

So we now had a plan of action, we assembled all the tools required, torch, gloves, concrete block, wooden spacer and a pipe to bend the bolt. Here is a shot of some of this.

So we have Oxy-Acetylene system with torch and a concrete block with a wood spacer. Only issue here was that the tip attached to the hoses was my small one and therefore the time to heat the anchor bolt was longer than normal. However we then proceeded to heat up the anchor bolt at the bend line. Once heated sufficiently we used a longer pipe that slipped over the threads to apply force to put a 90 degree bend in the anchor bolt. Here are two pictures showing the heating and bending process.

After the angle was reached we placed the part aside to cool and went on to do another one. And that is how I "McGyvered" a straight anchor bolt to a bent anchor bolt as shown in the following two pictures.

Well that was the extent of the work this week. Next week it's off to pick up the 6 by 6 Fir timber's I'll be using for the porch posts and planning the list of materials needed for the Framer when he starts. I'm still not sure which TJI floor joist I plan to use. I am waffling between the TJI31 and the TJI47. They both have the same web structure the only difference is the flange on the 31 is 2.5" and the flange on the 47 is 3.5". This makes a stronger joist and a resultant stiffer floor however there is also a 2000$ differential in price and I'm not sure I'll notice the difference. I have decided on the flooring material and this will be Advantech 3/4" T&G flooring. I also plan to use the Advantech 1/2" sheathing on the roof trusses when we get to that stage.

Well until next week. Enjoy and stay safe out there.

Harold