Concrete Wall Pix - info - tips

[peg_688]

What was that about the Bruin's   13th place , :'( the way the current playoff sch. is , they may still make it into the playoffs  

Haven't watched a game in two years , the strike and the way they've changed the game pretty much just makes it uninteresting to me these days .

I'd rather bash the local regulators / engineers / politicians / and iron workers , heck architects as well  

[glenn-k]

For an old fellow you sure are rowdy, PEG.

Sorry boys --- all I ever knew about sports was that sometimes you could get a girl to go to the game with you. :-/

[peg_688]

For an old fellow you sure are rowdy, PEG.

Who said I was old   Why I oughta  ......

[desdawg]

Get 'em PEG.  
Daddymem, the common denominator isn't so much what is being put on or in the ground as natures ability to neutralize it's toxicity. The compononents of concrete come from the earth and nature can make them acceptable to return to the earth. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Man has been mixing the earths elements and pouring concrete for quite some time now and we haven't even come close to running out of seafood. But suddenly it is a problem. So my question remains are we talking about 1 fish in 10, 1 fish in 100 or 1 fish in 10 million? Just how significant is this?
Man's evolution on the planet is a long series of pendulum swings. We get sloppy and destroy in our lust for progress. Enter the environmentalists and we start to correct. Then the pendulum swings too far and we get way out of whack the opposite direction. That is what seems to be happening now. So we have to slow the environmentalists down and try to get the pendulum gently rocking back and forth around the dead hang position.
A similar situation would be the labor unions. At one time there was a real need for reform in labor practices. Enter the union organizers. Then the unions became too powerful. Now we have "Right to work" laws in many states. Same scenario. People get on a flag waving cause and get carried away. Things become too extreme.

[glenn-k]

We must have went to the same school, desdawg.  Did your teacher ever smack you over the hand with a wooden ruler? :'(

[peg_688]

Well said desdawg 8-) My teach used a 18" wooden ruler and it was across the back of the shoulder blades , only needed it once   Joe LaFond 7th grade !

 BTW I was not mared for life , didn't become a serial killer / criminal , drug addict, etc . And I deserved the whack and payed better attention in Mr. LaFond's class from then on.

[Okie_Bob]

Glenn, that reminds me of an article I read the other day you probably already know about.
Seems a Ca congress lady has introduced a bill to the Ca legislature to make it a crime to spank your own child. No excuses, no reason, you get caught you get finded and sent to jail!
Wow, my dad and I both would have been convicts, I guess...not to mention teachers I had.
Okie Bob

[glenn-k]

That's you PEG -- look what it did to me :-/

Please don't get me started on our politicians, Okie Bob.  I have seen lots of kids who did not receive direction and our California cities are full of them.  Prisoners in the making.  

[Daddymem]

I'm being unfairly painted as a tree hugging environmentalist-I am not-I'm pretty much that middle pendulum.  But I realize we can impact our environment negatively and we should strive not to do that when possible.  This washout issue seems out of hand.  I can the use of collectors/recyclers when working in a sensitive area but cannot see what use they have outide these sensitive areas.  Here in Mass, they couldn't do the washout near wetlands or water bodies because there are usually no disturb buffers and buffers requiring permits to do anything in.  The fines seem ridiculously high but I'm not privy to the economics.  Typically the fines have to be high enough to not make it worth it to ignore, those seem way beyond that.  Have these fines been levied on anyone or perhaps they are a "big stick" meant to threaten more than anything else.

Though all the ingredients do come in nature and eventually separate back into the earth, it is how it gets there and what it does on the way, and whether they actually exist where dumped that matters.  I doubt many fish would be killed in the case of washout making it into a river-unless it were alewife season around here for example.  That is when the stream is literally wall to wall fish.  We have to look at the summation of all the TSS from many sources making it into the waters that don't belong there.  Cement particles are very fine and wash away easily.  Sediments are something the EPA is hard on now.  Look into NPDES for more.  I suspect that is part of the washout regulations.

[peg_688]

Nah he ain't paintin ya , IMO. Are your radars sayin your being painted??

You watchin the Patties game ?? 0-0 1st 1/4 !

How about those Bruin's? Is Harry Sinden still GM ? He NEVER SHOULD HAVE TRADED Bobby Orr

[Daddymem]

Sorry, felt like it.  My education and experience are pretty much being set aside here.  Kinda like if I told you that you used the wrong wood in that dresser you built.  You do wood, I do storm water, erosion and sediment control, and deal with regulations (among many other things).  Guess I paid for school and have worked with these issues for all these years for nothing.  

The stuff in cement is nasty stuff...period.  The cement people usually think of is harmless because the chemical reactions has made it a solid, if it weren't for that even the hard stuff would be dangerous.  Instead of being part of a solid mass, washout suspends those nasties which makes it easy to find their way into a lake or stream as runoff.  Harmful, maybe, harmless, maybe, preventable-entirely.  Knowing how to regulate it-that the fine line.

Oh yeah, watchin' the Pats..lot better than 0-0 now.  

Harry has taken a back seat finally-what a piece of %$& that guy is.  The entire organisation has been overhauled from the GM down through the coaches and the players.  Bobby wasn't traded-he signed with the Blackhawks because his agent was a lousy rat:
http://members.cox.net/bobbyorr-4/orrbody.htm

[desdawg]

My opinion was just that. Nothing personal towards anyone. And I don't pretend to know everything. I just get tired of us being hammered with something new and expensive everytime we turn around. New regulations here a year ago increased the price of a septic system $1000. The consumer still get's the same septic system they always did, they just get to pay more for it. This year it is an impact fee. It will now cost an additional $8800 for a permit to build a house in this County. Allegedly this will force the newcomer to pay their way as services need to be added with the increase in population. Good theory right? However if you are not building a new site built home, but rather purchasing a manufactured home the fee is only $4000. Apparently manufactured home buyers drive on different roads and call a different less expensive sheriffs department when they have a problem. Stuff like this just ticks me off. So this topic was just another straw on the camel's back. I just found a place to vent a little.

[Daddymem]

I keep getting shocked.  Everyone knocks the northeast as the land of regulations and barriers to construction.  Doesn't sound so bad around here now.  No problem Desdawg, I'm a little "off" from last night-maybe I woke up?   :-?

[peg_688]

Yeesh we got agame now  :o21 - 21.  I was a mistake for Orr how ever it happened, and yes Gov't regs get old , for all of us  :(Cement is nasty , but it all cost money.  Welcome to our world , humm just drpped a sure TD  

No worries eh mates   We's just yakin to hear ourselfs anyway Now it's a TD 27-21 NE.  

[bartholomew]

we haven't even come close to running out of seafood.

Desdawg, I'm not sure if this was meant as a joke? An analogy would be a guy buying a bag of cookies. Whenever he gets the munchies, he reaches in and pulls out one or a few. After a week of eating cookies, he thinks "Hey, whenever I reach in the bag I always find a cookie. That must mean I'm not even close to running out." The reality is that over a quarter of the world's fisheries have already collapsed due to overfishing. Collapsed meaning that the fish population was reduced to less than 1/10th of what it was.

But suddenly it is a problem.

The site I linked above says it has been illegal to dump lime into fish-bearing streams in Canada since 1868. I don't know the date for the U.S., but since fishing was a very large part of the economy in the 1800's, they probably had similar regulations. That said, it was doubtless not as critical to enforce while fisheries were flourishing. But now... rivers are dammed, water is diverted for agriculture, industry takes out cool water and dumps warmed water back in, pesticides and manure get washed in, nearby development leads to high levels of sedimentation, etc.... fish are under a lot more pressure. A fish kill that might have been easily absorbed before could now devastate the remaining population. There is also more concrete being used, so more trucks, more deliveries and more wash outs.

So my question remains are we talking about 1 fish in 10, 1 fish in 100 or 1 fish in 10 million? Just how significant is this?

The same site as above says that the wash water from a single exposed aggregate driveway could cause a large kill of coho salmon. "Large kill" generally means 5,000 or more adult fish. A very large fish kill on a river might be 100,000 fish, but for the driveway it would be at the low end of the range, so say between 5,000 and 20,000 fish.

[Amanda_931]

As in, when was the last time you saw a codfish?  Or a school of Right Whales?

And back in the 1980's and 90's  every year brought new fish to the market that used to be considered trash.  Did anybody eat Orange Roughy back in 1969?  Or even Tilapia--which can be farm-raised?

Back in the early 19th century there were apparently tuna fish big enough to feed a 200 man crew for two days--and they ate a lot of meat or fish in those days--a couple of pounds a day, if not meal.

[glenn-k]

Since many of us are interested in block wall foundations I thought I would snap a few pictures of the pros building a block wall that  is later to be solid grouted at one one of my jobsites.

The foreman on this job built the corners first at each end of the wall with proper spacing already measured off and a line snapped on the foundation footings to keep the walls perfectly straight.  This guys technique is so smooth that it makes me wonder why it seems hard at all.  A quick whisk along the edge of the block with the trowel and the edge is buttered and ready to place.  He doesn't use a great amount of mortar on the trowel.



He used a precision 4 foot level to get the walls perfectly plumb.

I noticed a couple levels with hooks on them to keep them handy.



A special hook with a string was then placed at the very edge of the block to keep the rest straight.



Here is a better picture of it.  You could make something similar from wood or wood and nails.



Mortar is placed in cute little rows before the starter course is placed.



Here is a section ready for the crew to go to work on.



Steel is laid out on 24 inch centers to match the blocks which each have 2 holes on 8inch centers, so 3 of them equals 24".  In this case the rebar was 5/8 inch.



Steel columns are embedded in the walls as designed by the engineer.  Hooked rebar is stubbed out for the floor slab that is to come later.  The hook is inside the block.



This contractor uses pallets of bags of premixed mortar - adds water and mixes for a smooth consistent mix.



Long walls have special blocks for rubber expansion joints.



Blocks of proper type are set up a spaced for the next days work.  Every few feet is a table for mortar which one man mixes and another keeps refilling the tables.



End of the days work, a few hundred feet of wall about 5 feet tall.