Monday, April 24, 2017

Setting frost posts for Ben's tool shed

Saturday it rained pretty much all day , and it has been gray and wet for most of the week , so I had little hope of getting much done when we arrived on Ben's property on Sunday .
Rolled the frost posts covering the holes we bored last weekend aside , only to find . . . . .
. . . about two and a half feet of water in the holes , fortunately Ben thought to bring his dad's hand pump that made easy work of getting most of the water out of the holes .
After pumping them out , we got to enlarging the holes enough to fit the cast cement posts as the auger we used last weekend was not wide enough . Ben works for a land surveyor , so he brought his transit from work , and we were able to get the bottom of all the holes level with each other . Unfortunately the photographer was distracted and got no photos of the transit in action .
So the procedure was to stand the post up and walk them over near the hole .
Then with a three foot pipe thought an eye bolt set in the top of the post we picked the 230 pounds up . . . just barely
and lowered them in to the hole . . .
We must be good as we make it look easier than it is
Here is the video of the process . . . and I am certainly feeling it today
https://youtu.be/I8KBEYVehhY
The middle hole on the right side row only went down about two feet due to a massive rock we were not about to mess with , so that kept us from using a frost post in that one .
So we set a Sonotube and mixed a couple bags of concrete instead .
Note the old geezer is doing all the work and the skinny guy is just standing around .
After about three and a half hours of work we got the six posts in and they were all mostly in line and tops were level with each other .
Two six by six timbers will go across those lengthwise and then we can build the deck for the shed on top of them .
Finished the afternoon off with a little bit of target practice . Not so steady a hand after all that huffing and puffing . Annie did better at it than either Ben or me .


6 comments:

  1. I never heard of a frost post, but you certainly paid attention to detail in setting them.

    Nothing wrong with ending a hard days work with a little shooting. Is .22LR readily available up there now? Still hard to find here unless you order it on line.

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    1. Frost Posts are bigger at the base and tapered to the top so when the ground freezes the frost won't squeeze them out of the ground. Keeps things from shifting too much in winter. Not an issue down your ways in Georgia where the ground don't freeze like it does here, so its not an item you are likely to see sold down there.
      22s are back on the shelves up here. Have not seen so much at Wallyworld, but Cabelas in town has quite the selection and at somewhat more reasonable prices than a couple years ago. Boxes of 325 rounds of Federal are selling for 19$. CCI standard 22LR 9 $ for the 100 count box. Not as good as before the shortage, but things are settling down and the shelves are stocked and not clearing out as soon as they are stocked. Though there are still a couple mooks in the local classified trying to sell what they hoarded over the last few years and are asking 75$ for the same 325 count box.

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  2. I'd not heard frost posts before either. Just like a pile then really. How big is the shed going to be?

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    1. Hey Kev, frost post are regional for areas where the ground freezes hard down three feet or so. The taper keeps them from being pushed out by the freezing soil. Its just pre-cast concrete so you don't have to mess with mixing concrete on site. The shed will be twelve by sixteen feet. Hoping to get the deck for it framed up this coming weekend.

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  3. Love those old Rugers. I've got the same model, but so do a few million others, I'd guess.

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    1. Its a Mark 2 anniversary edition (1999 mfg) and was unfired when I bought it a couple weeks ago. Used to belong to a Ruger employee who bought two of them new and stored them till his heirs sold off the collection to pay their taxes. I had been looking for a Mark 2 skinny short barrel for a while but they don't come up all that often. Mark 3s are the ones you find usually but hey have some plastic components in them I did not care for.

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