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It is July, 2002 and I'm ready to start building my new house.
My store ( Purple Sage Trading
Post ) and a friend's trailer are in the background.
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First off I laid out the perimeter of the building by putting batter boards at all the corners and used them to square the perimeter of the building. You can see the edge of one in picture above on the left side and in the picture below in the middle to the left of the big block of wood. These are placed at all the corners and the top of the horizontal board is at the same elevation on all of them. I borrowed a friend's surveying level to get all the tops of the batter boards the same height. There are nails on them that you can hook strings to to represent the outside of the concrete slab (final sides of the structure).
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Where I live the bottom of the stem walls need to be 30 inches below final grade.
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After the back hoe dug the trenches they were cleaned and I then placed re-bar
in them. I had a friend that I met at the Pueblo car show in 2001 that is from St. Louis and he came and spent
some time with me and helped with this stage. Thanks so much Don!!! You can see Don's home away from home in the
first picture parked next to my store.
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As we poured the stem wall trenches we placed vertical re-bar in them every 30 inches or so. It will latter be bent flat and will tie the slab to the stem walls. I also ran strings on the batter boards at this time (see picture) and used them to place wooden stakes into the fresh cement. The stakes are on the outside line of the slab plus 1 1/2 inches and will hold the forms for the final pour of the slab.
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