Construction News

Out front, they’ve got to deal with the sewer connections coming out into the street from everybody’s house. Not now. They’ave got maps of the sewer system as it was put in around 1887, a year before the house was built. But all the neighbors have their sewer lines running out the back, down to the alley. The sewer is 8′ below the street out front. The lines are below that down the back. So how are they going to deal with this? Gravity is working against the system. We don’t know. The sewer engineers met Forman and talked with him yesterday.

The house shakes. It woke me out of a nap. Small vibrtations caused by I don’t know what, and big ones caused by the bulldozer pounding the hole in the street.

Constructing grids of rebar in the square holes they’ve made in the vault. None of the holes is the same size, differing wildly. 8′ square, 12×20′. A crew of Mexican workers doing all the work. Gravel goes in the bottom of the grid. They’re making a cage spacers.

The sewer work out front – they realized we have a downstairs apartment, and came back to see if we had a sewer connection back there. They’re going to have to dig up our front yard, and they cautioned us to take bunches of pictures and call some PR guy if anything gets damaged. Fun guys, the engineers. Both mid-50s, trading Vietnam stories with each other while talking to us. The one got out after 2 months by being crazy. Back then, it was a sign of insanity to want to be in the Army. Ex hippies, both of them.

Ralph reed lost. Yay. They’re out there still cutting square holes in the vault, maybe 8′ on a side. they’re cutting and welding rebar waffles to go in the forms they’re building. The beginning of piers, i suppose. Droop’s gone, there are two small bucket diggers. White guys and Mexicans. No blacks. Same with the street out front.

The street – they’ve dug up a spot 2 houses down, in the middle of the block instead of starting at maine and coming west. There was a manhole, but it was beneath the curb line, and had been hidden since they covered over the cobbled stones with macadam. How strange. They left the bulldozer parked on the street last night.

Temperatures in the upper 90s every day. Not sleeping much at all. very lethargic during the day. Slept until 11 today.

Forman is out on a makeshift drafting table, bent over charts, in the shade of my tree. Dumptrucks are coming down the ramp unloading more gravel at the far side of the site.