by Tony Heath, Project Engineer
This post covers Tuesday, September 3rd.
Howdy!
It was good to be back out at the rain garden today after a long Labor Day weekend. The Facilities & Services crews worked on the hardscaping: concrete sidewalk and the garden’s granite edging. When I arrived this morning, Josh and Stephanie were continuing to work their way around the garden installing the steel bed edging and stone base for the decomposed granite. Today, they focused on the sidewalk between the north and south cells. Meanwhile, the concrete finishers arrived on site around 8:30 a.m. and began installing forms to pour the sidewalk expansion along the north edge of the rain garden. In appreciation of everyone’s work, Eliana brought the crew oatmeal cookies. They were delicious and very popular. Thanks, Eliana!
Forms installed by the concrete crew. Photo by Tony Heath.
CONCRETE: Once they had the forms set, the concrete finishers began pouring concrete at the northwest corner of the rain garden near the bike racks and Allen Hall parking lot. Completing this location frees up the parking lot tomorrow so we can open those spaces back up. Once this part was done, they moved over and began setting the forms for the north bridge abutment. We measured out the radii based on the plans and ran string lines across to the south side of the garden to make sure that the abutment was aligned with where we were matching the bridge on the far side. Tomorrow, they’ll pour everything except the abutment footing itself when they pour the rest of the sidewalk expansion along that north edge.
The crew began pouring concrete in the northwest corner. Photo by Tony Heath.
GRANITE: We ran into a slight issue when tamping down the decomposed granite in the areas that they had prepared this morning. Since the grade has been raised here above the existing ground elevation, there is nothing holding the back side of the steel edging in place when they go to tamp it down. This causes it to bow out a little and wobble rather than giving a nice clean line. Tomorrow, Josh and Stephanie will bring in topsoil to backfill the soil along these areas and give something to resist the edging and keep the edge looking nice and clean.
Grade has been raised above ground level.
Photo by Tony Heath.
The area will be backfilled with topsoil.
Photo by Tony Heath.
Tomorrow will be another busy day! Come back here for the latest rain garden construction news. Or stop by the site for a cookie (if we haven’t eaten them all).
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