Adobe T-Brick Shed: Trenching the Foundation

By -
The plan is to put in a rubble trench foundation. A rubble trench is a trench filled with rubble or gravel. Clever eh? The benefits are of the rubble trench are:

  • No concrete required. The trench will be filled up to grade level and the building will be built directly on it.
  • The rubble drains water away from the building.
  • A moisture barrier. Water will wick up through the soil and concrete through capillary action. With a rubble trench they are air gaps that stop the wicked action.
  • The rubble trench distributes the weight of the structure.

Sounds great except for the whole digging the trench part in hard packed caliche soil. Caliche is a soil that has been cemented together by lime (calcium carbonate). Lime will prove useful later in the building process but for digging the foundation, not so much. Fortunately, we just have to get below frost line which in central Texas is like 6 inches. We're going for a depth of 12" - 18". For the job we rented a trencher which is kind of like a chainsaw for the ground.

Our first trencher lasted for about an hour and a half before giving up

The next day we decided to upgrade a bit to a hydraulic trencher which made a huge difference

The problem with the trencher is that makes a trench about 4-6" wide. We need a width of approximately 18".

So we had to dig two parallel trenches.
Jean even got in on the trenching action.

Jean is digging a drainage line from the foundation




As a reward for her grueling labor Jean got a milk shake from P.Terry's
   

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Black Soldier Fly Larva Harvester

By -
Image
Black soldier fly larva are voracious decomposers. Here's a video  of a some larva completely devouring a hamburger over the course of five hours. And here's a video of some chickens completely devouring some black soldier fly larva. Black soldier flies have some curious qualities that make them particularly well suiting for cultivating their larva as fodder for your feathered friends: As stated before black soldier fly larva are voracious. They will eat fish and meat scraps that you would not typically put in your compost pile for fear of attracting larger vermin. They break down organic material into usable compost extremely rapidly. As an added bonus black soldier fly larva eat the eggs of other fly species who foolishly lay their eggs in rotting organic material. This severely diminishes your population of house flies and fruit flies. I had a compost pile that was beset with fruit flies until the black soldier fly larva moved in. When a black soldier fly larva is re...
Read more

Roundwood Building Workshop

By -
Image
I went to a Roundwood Building Workshop this weekend. Roundwood is timber that is left as logs rather than being cut into planks. We constructed a shelter for a cob pizza oven (yet to be constructed). The timer is a mix of red cedar and ash juniper. Before doing anything with it we had to take the bark off it to prevent insect infestation down the road. The night before the project leaders charred the end of the posts that would be put in the ground. The charring is another insect infestation prevention measure. Getting the cut ends charred is of particular importance. The post holes were dug to a depth of 2-3'. We also half buried a couple of dozen roofing nails in the charred end of each post for additional stabilization. The cool thing about roundwood is that you can use features of the tree(like this limb) to add beauty and support. This limb will provide support for a girder. After we got the posts in position we back-filled the holes with decomposed g...
Read more

T-Brick Shed: Rubble Trench French Drain Installation

By -
Image
The last thing Jean told me before she left for the UK was that I had better finish the shed project before she gets back or else. The trench was a little soggy still but I decided to press on with the french drain installation for fear what that else may be (Although, I'm hoping the "else" will be make me a delicious sandwich). I dug out the high section blocking  the drain outlet and and cleaned up a some edges before putting down landscape fabric and a layer of gravel. Putting down the landscape fabric in the trench. Landscape fabric is water permeable but significantly less sediment permeable. This will help prevent the gravel and french drain from becoming blocked up with silt. Here's my work crew. The tamp/rake tango Release the hose! Uncoiling the perforated tubing. First objective was to fill in the tripping hazard that is the drain outlet. Note how we form a sort of gravel/perforated hose burrito with the landscape fabric. We...
Read more