My family tell me I’m obsessed. I prefer to think of it as focused.
I spent this summer building an 8’ × 8’ root cellar. Most of my spare time was taken up with this project. It was a lot of fun.
I started by hiring a backhoe to dig a 6’ hole. I wanted to go deeper, but we hit shale bedrock and the shovel was only able to scrape a bit of it. I then built forms to hold the footings. I carved boards of wood to fit the irregular contour of the bedrock. I drilled holes 12” into the shale to seat the rebar that anchored the concrete.
When the footings were ready, I hired a contractor to pour the concrete. The depth of the building was greater than the reach of the truck’s chute. A special hose-truck will extend the range, but it costs an additional $450. Fortunately I found a fellow who had built a big bucket (1 cubic yard) which he filled at the roadside, carried to the site with his backhoe, and dumped into the forms.
After the concrete set, I ordered 250 concrete blocks, and started building the walls. Sometimes “smart” is its own worst enemy. I had a U.S. Army manual on bricklaying. It said the blocks were 15 ⅝”, and should be laid 16” apart. As we all know, the building trades still aren’t metric, right? Upon measuring the blocks that I was shipped, I discovered they were 15 ⅜”. Tarnation! I thought. Those cheapkates at Shaw Brick! They shorted the blocks in order to use less concrete and make more money. This meant I had to butter a thick layer of ⅝” between the blocks. This is very difficult as the wad plops to the ground when the block is tilted horizontally.
After four tiers and much frustration, I found two professional bricklayers repairing a stone wall at Acadia University, and persuaded them to finish the job. They finished in two days what would have taken me all summer. I asked them how they managed the gap. They said masonry was metric. They bricks were 39 cm, placed 40 cm apart, which resulted in a very manageable 1 cm (⅜”) gap. Doh! That little lesson cost me $500.
Another book said the roof of the root cellar should be an arch: the condensation would run down the wall, and avoid dripping on the vegetables. So I entered the equation for a catenary curve in a spreadsheet, and calculated the coordinates of the points. A catenary is a self-supporting curve, like the St. Louis Arch. I traced the curve on a sheet of plywood, cut it out, and gave it to Barry the concrete contractor. A few weeks later, his crew was erecting the scaffolding to support the 5,000 lbs roof. He used a double layer of ¼” plywood to support the concrete.
When the cement truck arrived, the mixture that Barry had specified was too thick. The driver added water on the spot, so that the consistency was more liquid, but thick enough that it kept its curved shape without support. They did a beautiful job. I was full of trepidation and excitement as the weeks went by until the roof was dry enough to remove the forms.
What a thing of beauty it was!