After working on the land yesterday, I took my dad out for mexican food and margaritas and then we stopped by Lowe's. We now have a total of 12 pressure treated piers which we will cut up to become piers for the cabin foundation. The piers are 6"x 6" and are 8' long. The goal is to end up with 24 piers with six running down each of the skids which run underneath the cabin.
The skids which run underneath the cabin are 4"x 4". The 6"x 6" piers will provide us with a solid structure but also with some flexibility. Since they are larger than the skids, it will be easier for the moving company to put the cabin in place. This also makes it such that any slight variance when installing the piers does not make the foundation questionable.
Before digging the first hole, we needed to put a few corner posts in the ground to layout the cabin footprint again. With the tree stumps removed and the ground leveled, we were able to move the cabin back a little further from the road which is great. It took a little time to measure out the footprint and ensure it was square with corner measurements but we were able to get it done.
The skid steer has an 8" auger bit which was used to make holes for the piers. I'd originally thought I would dig these by hand or rent a post hole digger. The skid steer made quick work of the holes. What is even better is that my dad would lift the front wheels of the skid steer placing all of its weight on the auger bit. We went deep enough that it would not dig anymore which should give us a much firmer foundation than I would have been able to accomplish with any hand held option.
We worked out the location on the four corner posts first. We took our time working on the holes and putting in the post such that they were square. We relied upon my pictures (posted here previously) of the cabin skids to ensure that the piers would land immediately under them. This obviously meant that the piers are not at the corners of 16' by 32'.
With the corner posts all firmly in the ground, we stopped to eat lunch. When we resumed, we ran sting to ensure the rest of the posts across the front and back would be in a straight line, of the same height, and then used a level to ensure they were perfectly level. My dad would dig the holes with the skid steer, I'd cut the post and put it in place, he would hold it level, and then I would back fill with concrete, or gravel depending upon the post. Regardless of if the post was put in place with concrete or gravel, they all had 2" of gravel put in the hole before the post was added to keep the bottoms from rotting.
At the end of day two, we had the front four piers in concrete, rear four in concrete, and four along one side in gravel. You can tell from the picture below that we were able to level the land some but there is still a fair amount of elevation change. This will place the front of the cabin a little high but will at least ensure that there will be plenty of water runoff so we don't have water sitting around the bottom of the cabin or piers.
My dad and I were completely exhausted at the end of the day. We pushed ourselves really hard over the past two days. I was starting to get easily frustrated and the two of us started making small mistakes as we were no longer as quick witted as the beginning of the day so we decided to stop. We went back to his house, at some chicken, and just sat on the couch for a few hours to recover for another day.
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