McHugh/Gant Hangar House

Day 483 - Got Rocks?

Friday, October 13 -- Friday, the 13th. We hope you all survived. Today, Kelli and Ken made a road trip to Redding to pick up the aggregate for the next hangar apron pour. So, no pictures today.

They left at 8:30 in Ken's big, red pickup and towed his easy-loader trailer. Kelli got to hang out with a lot of contractors.

They stopped and got a truck tire repaired, picked up more concrete color for the apron, stopped at the paint store for spray paint, found some cold-rolled steel for the rail mountings for the safety fence along the big rock retaining wall. A stop at Home Depot resulted in a pallet of cement bags (36 94# bags).

A fuel stop was in order to fill up the diesel fuel tank on the back of the truck used for refueling tractors, back-hoes, excavators, and all of Ken's other toys.

Ken and Kelli stopped at Gene's Burgers on Hwy 273. A little greasy, but good burgers. It's a street rod hangout. They ate their burgers in the truck waiting for the Case parts store to reopen after lunch so they could buy air filters for the tractors.

Then they went to Lindells to get trowels, a replacement drill bit, and supplies for the concrete work. Kelli took the opportunity to ask a couple of other customers about our concrete problem in the apron. The recommendation they came up with is to use Coca Cola as retardant. Basically, sugar is used to slow down the chemical reaction that causes, and Coke is cheaper than the retardant sold for the purpose. They said make sure it's Coke and not Pepsi. We'll see how it works.

Oh yeah, a stop at Vic Hannan's for aggregate -- that was the point of the trip. Vic had advice on how to install the aggregate. He said people usually remove too much concrete after installing the "seeds", the aggregate stones. So we have specific directions on how to do the job. We bought 2.5 yards of 7/16" stones, that's 6,625 pounds added to our load. The aggregate we chose is called Coral Sea. It is mined in Alabama and shipped to Oakland by rail. Then it is trucked to Redding, and now trailered to Trinity Center. Because the normal delivery to Vic Hannan's wasn't going to arrive in time for our pour, Vic sent his truck down to Oakland and picked up 25 yards of Coral Sea so that they'd have enough for us. That's great service.

We still don't have a definitive solution to the concrete surface problem with the first pour. We did get several opinions about what the problem could be, mostly having to do with overworking the finishing. But we haven't decided what, if anything, we will do with the first pour.

Meanwhile, John the carpenter worked on the stair railing balusters. Dave installed downspouts, the planter boxes on the north side, the beginning of a small retaining wall on the south side, and spread some gravel.

We got back to Trinity Center about 5:30. Mike flew in about 6:15.