Every Day I’m Shovelling

So – the shed frame is up – but has been tethered to the truck for stability and safety until we concrete in the footings.

The FB drafted in my help with this one, after he explained that I would certainly make this job quicker, than him just by himself.  He did do all the concreting in the bottom of the footings, and that was not as effective  as it could have been, so I had to swing off a shovel.

The concrete mixer we have borrowed to do the job belongs to my cousin, and has had a previous life as a concrete mixer for a the local council.

It is VERY noisy, but does the job – and it saves all that mixing that humans would have to do, so we are glad to have it.

The road was very wet, and we erred on the side of caution and walked across the creek – and over to the shed.

Because of the amount of rain – the creek was up and just on the edge of the limit of my wellies on the trip over.  So in our collective wisdom, we decided to duct tape my wellies to by trousers – up to just over my knees, in an attempt to keep the water out. 

The day of the concreting is showering weather, not cold but certainly wet.  Because there is no where to keep out of the rain as yet, we put up the portable gazebo that we bought for shade at Christmas time.

The water has to be collected from the creek in 20l buckets and walked back to the work area.  The cement needs to be kept dry – until such time as it is mixed with one shovel to 5 shovels of aggregate into the mixer, with just enough water to make it the consistency of a good custard or white sauce.  My old gloves were a bit worse for wear, so prior to commencement , the duct tape came out again – and they were ducted taped to my wrists.

So, I shovelled.  And mixed.  And poured into the wheel barrow.  And the FB pour and shovelled on the other end.  And it rained, and rained and rained.

At one point, recognising the irony of carting water back from the creek, when it was just falling out of the sky, we tried to come up with a way to catch the water off the roof of the canopy.

You know the way that water collects on a tent roof or the roof of a marquee.  So you can see it from the underside and push up on the bugle so the water drops out?  Well – if you really need that water to go into a bucket – it won’t.  No matter how hard you try to make it flip off the roof and into the bucket.

Mostly it just runs down the inside of your shirt sleeve. 

As we walked back in the rain, it was pretty clear that the creek had come up quite a bit – so I felt pretty smug about the ducted taped wellington boots.  The FB just cut to the chase and went in barefoot.  A brave brave man.... that water is FREEZING!

So the best bit is being able to make our mark in the footings.  In 100  years time at least they will know which crazy people decided this was a good idea!