Up In The Air, part 4

It's now June. On Monday, the Bobcat guys came back and finished off the demolition of our old basement, and graded the excavation. On Tuesday, the concrete guys began by pouring the concrete foot for the foundation, 20" wide by 8" deep, with two spots for the posts that are supposed to support the beams that will replace the old inside walls. Wednesday saw the first of two days of block laying; Thursday saw the finish of the block laying and the smearing of stucco (concrete) to seal the outside. Friday nothing happened. The drying process of mortar and stucco was visible, and happened apace in spite of more rain. We spent another weekend airborne. The blocks in our foundation are 12" deep by 8" high by 16" long; the 12" dimension is specific to foundation work. Each block has two cavities, which should provide some dead-air insulation.

I still don't know an awful lot about our general contractor, but all his subcontractors are good. The guy from Xcel Energy who came to mark lines for digging said he loved our Bobcat guy. The Bobcat guy was excellent, and he said that "nobody lays block like Dennis Fedderly," our concrete and block guy. We had needed some repair to our crawl space in the back some years ago, and this was the guy who did the block; the Bobcat guy said that the block repair was the hardest of everything to bust out during excavation.

Let's give a name to the Bobcat guy: Don Berg. He didn't use Bobcats per se; that's a trade name. Don has a couple of New Holland small tractors, one with big metal treads and one with rubber treads. He said that he earned his respect from Xcel Energy by damaging a gas line "a little bit, and I reported it pronto." He was the one who pointed out that we had a good deal of clay under the house, and he suggested drain tiles, which had not been bid originally because the general guy had assumed, reasonably enough, that we were on sandy soil as is much of the town. He put down wood guides for driving his tractors over the sidewalk and driveway. Have you seen the Tom Hanks film, "The Money Pit?" This (drain tiles) was going to be change number one.

Monday, two days ago, the concrete guys came and swabbed tar sealant on the new foundation.
Yesterday, all the debris in the yard was finally hauled away. This was great, because it included the old basement windows and broken glass, a good deal of 80-year-old sheet metal ductwork, odd brick and wood, etc., which had spilled a couple of feet into the other neighbor's yard. Much of the dirt was pushed back against the new blockwork, and our driveway was scraped clear of most of the stored dirt. The place began to look semi-normal.

Today, the house was lowered onto the new foundation. The girders are still under the house, so some blockwork is still to come, and the basement windows (including one "egress window") haven't been put in, but we're at the elevation we'll be at for years to come. This will be some 12 to 16 inches higher than before: it's a good thing, because it gives us room to grade the yard away from the house in ways that weren't possible before, but it means at least one more step on the front porch and some re-jiggering of the driveway and step to the back entrance. Hooray! - I still have plumbing, power, cable, etc., and the steep ramp on the jury-rigged porch is now less steep.

One challenge we hadn't addressed was the back entry. It had always been open, and subject to leaves, snowmelt, and other weather problems. Now, the basement will extend under it, so the elevation will change. How to weather-seal it? The contractor will put down a rubberized seal over the exposed basement ceiling that will now be outside our kitchen door, but we hadn't considered walling it off to keep away the onslaught of snow and rain. That's change number two ("Money Pit"); we will have what amounts to a vestibule outside the kitchen door. I had always considered hanging plexiglass on the railings we had, but now we'll have a wall, with a door and not enough windows. I envision a door that will be open except in wet or snowy weather; Wendy envisions a darkness that can't be alleviated no matter how many windows are put in. I wanted some form of double or sliding door, but that would jack the price even further than otherwise. Also, because of the change in elevation, we need to consider steps that weren't there before. They broke some of the driveway when they took out the back entry to make the new basement; how much can be taken up in the repair and how much needs to be a step?

Still to come: pulling the girders, and blocking in the holes. Setting the windows. Figuring out where the water and gas will be piped to. Figuring out where the water pipes and the drainage (toilets, etc.) need to get into the floor. Figuring out the location for the floor drain, which will be determined by the location of the furnace. Venting the furnace and the dryer. Setting the sump pump for the drain tiles. Possibly choosing an on-demand water heater. Pouring the new basement floor, which is subject to much of the above. Building new basement stairs(!). )Placing new light fixtures and electric plugs. Putting in new sheet metal ductwork, and reconnecting the furnace and central air. Somehow we need to set up a "utility room," with the furnace, the laundry, the water heater, etc., in such a way that some future owner can finish the basement if needed.

What a mercy - only for this selfish reason - that we haven't suffered a heat wave! I could kill for some 85-degree weather, which we haven't had yet, but in these circumstances it can wait another couple of weeks. I've worn shorts for only three days; last year my third day was sometime in April. It's yet another rainy day, with severe weather threats for overnight, and for tomorrow in the southern half of the state, where Wendy is at a meeting, and the yard is still a sea of mud. Can you imagine: Lake Delton, by Wisconsin Dells, blew out its impoundment and flowed away! The Tommy Bartlett Waterski Show has no water on which to perform! This was part of the same flooding that washed away a number of houses in the Dells. Great TV film, but holy crap!

This has been a year of a record number of tornadoes and incredible amounts of rain, widespread flooding and some other remarkable weather. Gobs of baseball-sized hail. Snow in the West. Drought in the Southeast.

We want urgently to help the people in Myanmar after the cyclone, and the junta won't let help in . That's news. We want urgently to help the people of China after the devastating earthquakes.
What does the rest of the world feel about the steady parade of natural disasters in the US? Except for Katrina, have we ever received offers of aid for any of our horrible weather-related catastrophes? Is, for example, Germany interested in helping out in the Dells?

One of the curses of our ambivalent foreign policy, and especially the Bush Administration's steady pissing off of other countries, is that we are not considered a part of the world community, but some special case that needs no help but can be called upon if somebody else is in need and blamed if we don't respond . Our next President (dear Lord, let it be Obama) needs to lead a very specific effort to integrate us into the wider world, so that we can extend help when we can - it wouldn't be America if we didn't - but so that others will extend help to us at need.

Sorry. That's a bit off topic. But Jesus! How can one eight-year period so alienate us from the whole world? Anyway, you're up to date. Wendy's in Milwaukee, and I'm off to bed.