Bickal Koi Farm: Koi House Blog 2009 Addition!

August 23, 2009 Business is still growing. We decided to build an addition to the koi house! The new addition will double the size of the existing building.   I got started on my addition. First I had to remove a 8,000 gallon fingerling pond. Also had to remove two Apple trees. I hand dug a bunch of dirt out around the foundation. Put in two 4" tile lines and a 4" line to flush my settling chambers. Also reburried the electrical and natural gas lines so they are out of the way.   Wed Oct 7th Dan Deihm from Cedar River Garden Center in Palo sent over a guy with the skid loader to dig out for the foundation. Normally I would rent a skid loader but this ground is very soggy due to some natural water (spring), so I wanted someone more experienced to come dig. Digging commenced with the removal of the two apple tree stumps, which almost resulted in the skid loader sinking in quick sand. My friend however is very experienced with the machine shruged that off like it was nothing, and got to work digging out the foundation. It was like he was driving the skid loader on top of a marshmellow, the ground was so spongy. 20 minutes in and he was half done and then one of the tracks came off the skid loader. He backed out slow and we loaded the broken track into the bucket and he limped back to the truck.   Just waiting for the skid loader to get repaired so he can finish. Its going to be a race against the weather as we are already getting frost and temps only getting to around 45F during the day.   Oct 19 Well the skid loader was back, this time with metal tracks. Not as good, he almost got stuck several times and the hole turned into a swampy mess. He dug as much as he could and we hand to finish by hand.   This tree root gave us nothing but problems. It took me several hours with a chain saw and hatched to separate it from the old cement foundation. Chain saw doesnt go through dirt and rocks mixed in with root.   Hand digging done enough to start setting Footer Forms.   Forms are all set, rebar is in, inspection is passed. I had everything lined up to pur cement today, except its been raining since midnight and were expected to get 2". The excavation site has turned into a quick sand hole. Hopefully I wont get to much dammage. Rescheduled for monday...   We poured the cement for the footings on Monday. Due to the location I had to have a pumper truck come in. The cement truck dumps the cement into its hopper and then it pumps the cement up through a big boom and into the forms. The pumper truck operator uses a joystick thing to move the boom around as you pour. Sorry I wasn't able to get more pictures of that operation as it was really cool. I needed to have someone there taking pictures for me.   I was busy running the hose with the cement coming out. My dad was there to help shovel cement to level it out. It only took 1 hour to fill the forms. After that I screeted it off and then trowled it. Instead of using rebar I put a keyway into the footings. First time ive done that so I hope I did it right.   5 yards of Cement was $545 and the pumper truck cost me $335.   The forms for the footings have been stripped off, and the ground smoothed out. Just waiting on my contractor friend to bring wall forms over!!   My bottom drain and airline plumbing is in place.

Page 15