Today was one of those days that was a battle – and I feel a bit like I lost. We have been working on several jobs – there’s the framing at the back where we’ve replaced the sheathing and framed in the new windows. Kathryn finished the nailing on that today, so that at least is good.
There’s the everlasting pain that is the plumbing. I’m now down to one join – which is probably going to be made from two 22.5s stuck together – because it’s not 45 and it’s not 22.5 degrees, and there’s a subtle misalignment between the parts I precut a while ago, and where the vent exits the roof. I have at least managed to get the rest of it all connected together so when the plumbing test stuff finally arrives I’ll actually be able to test it.
I’m suspecting there’ll be at least one leak from one of the crappy joints. Still, we’ll see how it goes.
Anyhow, that was a complete arse today because I thought it was a 45 degree turn. It *should* be, but something I’ve done somewhere means it’s not. And I dry fitted stuff and it went together in that way that things sometimes do when you dry-fit where it clearly wasn’t going to work. But having tried my spare 22.5 turn in there that dry-fitted well enough that I thought it might work. With a bit of brute force and holding.
But I’m using different glue (because they only had multipurpose glue, not the plain ABS glue, and I figured that might be handy as I come to actually installing finish plumbing which may be PVC). It turns out this stuff takes *way* longer to dry, so as I tried to brute-force the joints, the other joints came apart. It ended up being a bit of a tedious disaster, more frustrating because it’s so close to finished and also it’s ladder work, so I can’t do it when Kathryn’s not there.
So I’ll attack it tomorrow, and hopefully get it to work.
Now, to be fair, if my morning hadn’t been so shoddily unproductive, then I would probably have had the patience and common sense to know that it wasn’t fitting well enough to work. But the morning went like this…
Our reading of the plan is that we need 40 5/8″ x 12″ anchor bolts made from galvanised steel.
Call places.
No one has them.
Call company A (poor sodding company A) who say they can get them tomorrow.
[Nip out to get plywood]
Place order with company A.
Visit Home Depot to look at what they have (and because I know I’ll need a 5/8″ SDS drill bit, because I don’t have one and an impact driver). They don’t have them either. Buy tools in readiness for installation anyhow as they are on sale and only have 2 of the impact driver, but hold off buying bit for impact driver as I’m not yet sure what size I need.
Call back company A because have moment of realisation that the price didn’t feel right. Discover that there has been miscommunication, they are ordering bolts to go in before concrete is poured. As we don’t have a time machine, cancel order.
Long discussion with company A where we discover that they can neither get, nor believe exist, 5/8″ anchor bolts made from galvanised steel.
Call engineer. Discuss plans. Identify that what we can get – which is adequate – is 36″ lengths of zinc coated threaded bar, which we can then cut to length, then epoxy in place, then screw down.
Drive back out to Company A (poor, poor sodding company A). Company A order pick for us, 20 threaded bars, 40 washers, 40 plate washers and 40 nuts in 5/8″… and 5 tubes of painfully expensive epoxy.
Drive to Home Depot, return the drillbit which is the wrong size for the 5/8″ bolts when epoxied in (you need a 1/8″ larger hole, apparently).
Literally as I’m leaving home depot get a phonecall from the engineer who points out a paragraph on the plan which indicates an alternative bolt pattern – at the end of the section after the main shearwall hold down section…after the nailing pattern… after all of that.
He explains that this is actually adequate for attaching our house as our house has got existing foundations. This requires approx 40 1/2″ x 10″ long expansion bolts.
I resist the urge to scream.
So tomorrow I get to return the stuff I bought from (poor, poor) Company A, and return the new drillbit, and replace it with the previous-fkin drillbit, and hopefully, gods hopefully, actually fix the house to it’s damn foundations once and for f’kin all.
I’m very grateful that he called, because it’s going to save probably at least $100 – and lots and lots of time, and also save me having to deal with the hideous epoxy. But…augh!
