Thursday, August 12, 2010

Surveying Blues

I hate survey staking for new construction, I really really do.  It seems that you can have all the measurements between each stake perfect, but the diagonals don't add up and darned thing isn't square. So you fiddle around and get all the diagonals the same, but then the stupid distances between the stakes are wrong. So you fiddle with them a bit, trying not to mess up the diagonals; but no, the diagonals are off... or worse, only one of the diagonals is off but everything else is perfect! You just know if you fiddle with that last stake to get the diagonal right, then all the other measurements and diagonals are going get out of whack again.

Over and over and over with the tape measure, back and forth and back and forth from stake to stake.  You start thinking that maybe 1/4" really isn't going to make that much of a difference; but deep down, you know that this is a lie you're telling yourself because you're getting frustrated and that if you don't do the foundation right your building will never be plumb, square, level or true no matter what you do.

Our cabin is even relatively simple, I designed it that way... 16 x 24 makes a perfect little 3:4:5 (well, 12:16:20) square triangle. You'd think it would be cake to get it staked out squarely... mwuahahaha the cake is a LIE!!!  And the absolute bestest part of all... you guessed it... it's RAINING!! Surprise, surprise :(

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you are not using batter boards to layout the building. They do make it easier.

Plickety Cat said...

This is the primary staking, the step before the batter boards :) Tweaking the strongs and batters for the final layout prior to setting the foundation will be much easier!

It gets a little complicated since our foundation is floating on grade and sticks out a little from the actual edges of our cabin.

Plickety Cat said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Marybeth said...

Good Luck!!