Went to Harbor Freight today, and hefted the (nearly) 14 lb sds max rotary hammer that has many, many excellent reviews.

Okey dokey.  I can lift it, and for relatively short periods I think I can manage it.

Looking at video tutorials, though...

I keep seeing, "make sure you turn off the hammer mode when you're dry- core drilling.""

So, if it's just a freaking drill, why does one need a rotary hammer to run these things?

Confused Kitties is confused.

I figured out that you meant the Bosch--or so I thought.

Right now, after looking, reading, watching, and thinking, AND because of Handydave's extremely generous offer to allow me to use his expensive bit (which I will, of course, replace if I screw it up) I think what makes the most sense is for me to buy that Harbor Freight SDS Max hammer for $130 and use the borrowed bit.

I may yet change my mind, but for the cost of a rental, I'll purchase a tool that a lot of people have tried and like, that is only .4 lbs heavier than the Hilti model that is closest to it (if they could even be compared, which I realize they truly cannot) and I won't have a $600 tool just sitting there most of the time.

This may  be a stupid choice, but I'm not loving the purchase of the lighter, sds hammer because Handyman Guy has drilled into concrete for me in the past (on a utility room rehab) to install anchors for a new mudsill  (old one was never done right and had thus rotted).  He used a regular drill and a masonry bit.  No issues.  

It seems like the sds-max hammer makes more sense overall.  It's heavy, yes.  Heavier than I could run for many hours straight, without a few months of hard-core weight training beforehand. But I think I can run it for short periods, which seems to be all that is required for most of the projects I'll do.  

Please argue with me.

I'm not interested in throwing $130 down the toilet, but I'm less interested in paying $400 for a tool that a-won't do this job in the quickest, easiest way and b-isn't necessary for most other jobs I do.

If my thinking is off, tell me.  

I can take it.

ETA:  I'm seeing a lot of conflicting information about these core bits, and how to use them.

Any enlightenment based on real-world expeirience would be welcome.

SO...are you saying I do not, in fact, need the hammer function for the core bit?

Cuz this drill I'm looking at does not have the drill-only function.

If I need drill-only, I need to go a different direction.

Got it.

So if I'm going to buy this Harbor Freight tool as my first rotary hammer, and thinking I will drill sort of a "crosshair" across my 5" "scope reticle" per Handydave's suggestion, what bits should I buy to go with the tool?

Would you drill 1/4" holes?  1/2"?  ETA:  Understanding that there is a pilot bit in the center of the core, I don't want to put a hole where that pilot bit should be able to bite.

Also there is an instruction in the manual to clean out the grease cup once per month and repack it, plus to grease the shaft of the bit where it goes into the hammer.    Any special type of grease?  Any special stuff I need to know about maintaining this "violent" piece of equipment?  (Not my word for it.  I got that off of a youtube video, but it does seem to be sort of a violent tool. )

ETA:  Come to think of it, my reciprocating saw is pretty damn violent.  I might have to start looking at our tools differently from this point forward.

There are times when what I DO NOT KNOW just gets a little overwhelming.

I never even knew these existed.

Romantic, yes.

Time loop?  Not by much.

Kitties is olde.



ETA:  As evidence, I give you the fact that there was a really hunky young guy at the wine store, walking up and down the aisles.  There was a time when I would have stopped in my tracks and watched. But I could not get past the man bun.  I tried to think of him as masculine.  He had the shoulders.  He had the six pack (you could tell, even through his shirt.)  But that enormous man bun....

I just couldn't stop staring at it.  And not in a good way.

Olde.  

Your bathroom tile is beautiful!  

Is that a Kerdi bench?

Yes.

Your man bun was a little loose.

Just sayin.

That's awesome!

I like the decorative border in the shower tile.

I laughed out loud at DuPont.  Wonder how much they spent to prove water will run through a freaking hole.

Tar paper is looking better and better.

ETA: I've got the Grace product taped around the new back door we installed September 2016.  Still standing there all taped up, no facing, no exterior siding since then, cuz that's how I roll.   Just the Grace tape over the joint between the new door and the wall sheathing.

So far it's holding up.  Hey, I'm doing my own personal product testing.

Any of y'all used the new gun/brush/roller applied flashings and waterproofing/airproofing membrane systems in lieu of a wrap?

They're awfully attractive for rough openings (to my way of thinking), if not for the flat panels of the house.

Thank you!

Would love to see what you have done with it!

@jchewie1 All information is welcome in this thread. :0)

I will remember this if I end up going with the Tyvek.

If I can afford it, I'm seriously considering the liquid membrane.

It makes sense to me, and penetrations don't seem to affect it as a water barrier.

Still looking around, still mulling.

I'm still mulling, but right now I'm looking at doing pressure treated plywood on the bottom two feet or so where there is no porch overhang, with OSB above that.

I'm seeing some claims that the liquid membranes are almost self-healing and close around penetations (screws and nails).  

I am not yet convinced.

ETA:  
Honestly, all of the house wraps I've seen have significant vulnerabilties both from penetrations and from deterioration over time (especially this last, if the application is done slowly, and if there's one thing I am, it's slow. )  

Asphalt paper works.  I've used it.  I understand it.  It doesn't turn into dust in ten years if I leave it exposed to air for a while before I sheath it.

Tyvek is better, sometimes, because it's a better barrier as it comes off the roll. That changes very quickly if something happens and I lose my help, or weather keeps me from getting the siding in place.

I'm looking for something better than all of the modern roll type sheathing methods.

Liquid membrane (like Redguard or some other equivalent) is something I understand when it's applied to a shower pan for waterproofing.

I just want something equally bombproof for an exterior application, which will also be BETTER at water management around penetrations, than is Tyvek or any other sheet/roll product.

I am intrigued by the new exterior liquid membranes which act as a house wrap.  In particular the ones which act as flashing around the (damn near impossible to truly waterproof) rough openings around big penetrations like windows, doors, vents, etc.

ETA2:  Honestly, one of the most attractive elements of a liquid membrane is that *I* can apply it.

I don't need a second person to hold up the damn other end while I staple or stick the stuff onto the sheathing.  I can roll it on.

Kitties, looks at the liquid membrane and thinks, I used to paint for a living.  I can do this all by myself!

ETA:  OH, you asked about siding.  Sorry @ar-jedi. I have sheathing on the brain right now.  On siding, I have no idea. I keep waiting to see how the budget on the framing package is going to fall.  I just know that anything I put up will have to be fastened, and that's a lot of penetrations.  Another reason the liquid membranes are looking better and better.  But I'm getting mixed information about how well they deal with penetrations, so I have yet to find something that says, "oh yeah, that's what I want."

I don't know that, and am exploring myself.  I also don't know that I can afford the systems on the entire building.  At the very least, I'd like to use it as flashing around window and door openings.

I have looked at something called Blue Poly out of (I think) a Florida company (Might be texas though).  I have looked at the more extensive system offered by Prosoco, which includes fast flashing piped out of a sausage gun and spread with a trowel, and then a flat panel membrane that rolls on to meet the flashing membrane. They also have something they call a "dam" that looks like it forms a caulk-like seal around windows in areas where they get shimmed.

These two were sort of early entries into the membrane market, best I can tell, and there are several copycat products available now, and I have not had time to look at them at all.  

I'm no help yet, but still looking and will definitely put what I choose here and why I chose it.  I haven't gotten a cost per square foot on these products yet, either.  Prosoco is an old company, and still family held, which is always a trust-building component, but it's not gonna be cheap.  Worst case I just can't do it.  Most likely I will end up with the fast flash on the rough openings, and regular house wrap of some kind  on the flat panels.

Holy crap, what a job.

I've jacked a house up before and built a foundation under it (including footers) with help.   I don't envy you the steps to fix that basement.  I might have walked away from that.  Sounds like some other folks did walk away before you got the house.

Did you know going in that you had structural issues to fix?

That's a good deal, and sounds like you had the skills to manage the issues.

At this point, wish you had done a thread, cuz I'd LOVE to see how you did all that.

Slow progress, but forward at least.

After a week solid of rain, then two days to dry out, I was able to do a little work on the drainage system around the building.

For anyone not reading through the whole book I've written thus far....

Because I didn't expect to need this drainage system going in, but got an eye twitch when I saw the grade above my mud sill,  I decided  I did need to add drainage after the foundation was set, and...well...

I'm sort of winging it.

I'm a detailed planner as a rule, but some of this is not what I would typically do, and when I hit those kinds of projects, unless I'm totally out of my element,  I tend to start something and figure it out as I go.  

CAVEAT: This is not a good idea if you don't have SOME understanding of what you're doing.

While I am scared of concrete, I am not particularly scared of drainage.  

Drainage is relatively straightforward, but it has its complexities, so I wasn't really worried about WHETHER I could make it work, but more "HOW" will I make it work.  One of my concerns has been finding daylight without a lot of trenching.  

Hey, everybody has to have a dream, right?

(For anybody who doesn't know, "going to dayliight" means taking a drain downhill to the point that the slope of the grade will allow you to bring the drain out naturally, into "daylight" without some kind of artificial  (and so, so often badly designed) way of getting the water out to the surface.)

Anyway, talking to y'all in this thread, and staring at the problem--neighbor's yard higher than my siding--I formed about ten percent of a plan, so I moved forward.

I decided on a sort of French drain, but with gravel to surface, so I'm making it up as I go as far as handling the higher part of the grade.  I need to just look at it for a bit and let my brain come up with a good solution.  My gut says that solution may well be the ugly-as-sin plastic landscape edging which I usually regard with utter disdain.   It will, however, prevent some soil ingress into my drainage system.  I'm mulling.

Anyway, some parts I still haven't figured out, but AFC was kind enough to dig my ditches before he left (he would not take extra money for this, though I tried.  I don't like asking contractors to do extra stuff when they're on a job they've bid.  A few extra hours can eat profit really fast.)

(Also FYI for anybody who doesn't know much about drains....AFC REALLY wanted me to just set the pipe on top of the footer.  And that's what a lot of people do, but  I don't do it that way, and I don't recommend it. I set a french drain or "footer pipe" BESIDE the footer, which means more digging and more gravel, but it means less water against the block itself.  It's just how I do it because doing it the other way gives me an eye twitch.)

In MY case, all I had was 8" above the footer, and if I put a pipe there, and gravel, I have pretty much ZERO clearance above the drain before my siding is in water during a heavy downpour.  Eye twitch.  I want that ditch to be big enough to take a lot of water quickly, and feed it into that pipe and around the side of my building.  [/drainage soap box]

Anyway...

So I've had this foundation surrounded by my own personal moat for the past week and a half.  (Really it wasn't as bad as I'm making it sound.  My soil perks like a mofo and we didn't get a lot of rain in a short period.  My days are numbered, though.  The downpours will be here and I need to be ready.

Today I spent a couple of hours and put the sides together for my trailer so I could haul stuff that's difficult to strap down and still...you know...be able to use my brakes without pipe flying into the backend of my trooper.  

Picked up 50 feet of perf pipe and ten feet of solid, and grabbed a couple of likely-looking elbow candidates while I studied what was available at Lowe's.  I haven't worked with the thin-wall pvc perf pipe nearly as much as I've worked with the corrugated perf pipe.  For this, I wanted to go as bomb-proof as I could afford.   Once I decide what I'm actually going to add to this system, I may grab some cleanouts to stick in because I have so many trees around the building, and cleanouts are always preferable to digging up pipe.  HOWEVER I question the viability of cleanouts for this type of installation.  (I'm told they can snake this, but a snake in perf pipe of any kind....I'm not seeing how that will end well. )

Also grabbed a new wheelbarrow, since the last one of mine gave up the ghost to rust two years ago.  (I've been making do with containers in the little mesh wagons I pull behind my mower.  yeah, that wasn't gonna cut it today.)




Unloaded that stuff, then went to the quarry 3 miles from me.

The ladies were very nice, but told me they cannot load my single-axle trailer with gravel.

HOWEVER, there was a quarry the other direction which would.  

Okay so instead of driving three miles one way, I'm now driving six.  

I'm grateful to be able to get gravel that is not in small bags.

Went to small-trailer-friendly quarry, found out that I can get two tons for $30, and that $30 is the minimum fee for dumping gravel on my trailer with a loader.  Even if I only get three teaspoonsful.  

Okeydokey then.

Met Gary, the nice loader guy.

He proceeds to dump gravel on my trailer using his enormous machine.  He dumps until the truck fenders start to dip a tiny bit.

Me:  "About how much do you think that is?"

Gary: "I dunno, but I saw the springs start to give a little."

Me:  "Yeah, me too."

Get to the scale.  Get weighed.

Go inside.  Have cash, just in case.  It's a good thing.  They can't take cards.

Them: "That'll be $30."  

I hand over two twenties.

Me:  "How much did I get?"

Him:  *hands me two five dollar bills*  "4100 lbs.  Just over two ton."

Me: OMFG!!!!!  (thankfully I did not actually say this out loud.)

Me:  *Actually Says* "Thank you so much!"  Takes weigh slip and runs for truck at top speed (a slow jog).  Drives REALLY carefully on way home.  Avoids bumps and potholes.

Prays whole way.


Seriously what was I gonna do, say, "no, take it back?"

Pucker factor TEN.

Truthfully, I could tell I had weight, but neither the truck nor the trailer handled much differently. Neither one complained.   But I was driving home thinking, "@Rat_Patrol is gonna kill me!"

I'll try not to do it again, but I'm pretty damn impressed with my little trailer, which has a 3500 lb axle and just carried about  5600 without complaining.

Yeah, I'll tell Gary to go a little lighter when I pick up the load tomorrow.

This is what 4100 lbs of coarse driveway gravel looks like on my trailer. Hopefully, you will never see this again.








I was running trying to get my stuff ready to unload and give my trailer some relief.

Fortunately I had a little help getting the gravel OFF of the trailer.  Uxb was home, was not overwhelmed with homework,  and he shoveled gravel into the wheelbarrow and brought it to me, while I cleaned the ditches, made a reasonable effort to fill the low spots with dirt,  and laid the fabric, then prefit the pipe.    It went way faster than I could have done it alone.  Like three times faster.


We worked til near dark.






Since I don't know who's reading this thread...

For any people COMPLETELY new to drainage....
As an aside, I might not always glue up drain pipe.  (I don't care if it leaks--the bottom half of the pipe is full of freaking holes after all) It depends on the installation.  But because of the way I'm doing this installation, I'm worried that it might move and come apart because I'm not gonna bury it in dirt.  Just gravel.  So because of potential activity on the gravel above it  (One side of my 800-lb lawnmower maybe),  I'm absolutely going to glue it up once I make the final decision about the configuration.


So.... I've hit one of those "Must figure out what to do" points, where thoughts from y'all are so valuable.

Here you see the building with the slope indicated as I presently have it set.




( I'm NOT changing the slope on the long side.   That would take an act of God (Or heavy equipment).)

But the slope on the right side--that could be changed.  I could add a little gravel,  slope it toward the high corner, then funnel ALL of that water down the long side, and (hopefully) find daylight (more on that later.)

Here's why I'm considering it..

Here's a view of the drain coming downhill, with enough photos to hopefully show the drop from the footer stepdown, where there is only ONE block above the footer, to the lower footer, which has three blocks of foundation above it.










You can see that I'm ending up in "utility spaghetti."

I'm uncomfortable taking the perf pipe through the utility spaghetti and letting water sit on those utility pipes.

If I take solid pipe around that corner and along the foundation of the "tall" part, I'm going to have to deal with weaving through those utilities.

I'm also going to have a long way to go to reach daylight, if I even can, with sloping the solid pipe.

I MIGHT can go to the corner, then out at an angle over the main septic line (that's the schedule 40 coming out at 60 degrees) and find daylight at the bottom of the backfill.  It's really hard to imagine, and slope is hard to see in photos.  It's too dark to take more tonight, but I can do that maybe tomorrow.

The backfill there will create a slope away from the building that MIGHT bring me to daylight.  Maybe.  It's hard to say until I get the grade in place.

BUT...

The OTHER option is to slope that side to the corner that is now the high point, and run it all down the length of the building, and out the back end. (not that I have a good way to daylight there, but it might end up being easier, since the property goes mostly downhill from the building to the back fence.)

What do y'all think about moving that much water that far through 4" perf pipe around a foundation?  That long side is 28'.  The short side is 16' before it drops to the "pad on the side" where the utility spaghetti begins.

Any thoughts are welcome.


OH...here's the gravel left on the trailer..






I figure it's 500 or 600 lbs maybe.

Given that I had...you know...four THOUSAND on it earlier.

Jeez-o-flip.

Okay so I should chill about maxing out my axle by almost double???

I still don't wanna do that again.

Cuz I can't fix it if it breaks.

Another question for concrete/foundation people...

Why is there a line of wicked water at that division between top block and second block?

I'm trying to understand how concrete works, and how it moves water.

I can tell you for certain that THAT is not the soil level at the point where the moisture line is.  The soil level is way lower.  At that point it is all fill.  

HOWEVER, it IS the soil level at the "higher" point where the footer "step up" happens...the "bigger" part of the foundation.

Is that why?  

This doesn't make sense to me.

Water goes downhill following the path of least resistance.

If the path of least resistance is "UPHILL" through something porous, water will take that path.

I just don't understand this wicking from that first block joint.

That's exactly what it's doing.

I'm not entirely sure why, since I would think the block is more porous than the pad itself.    Maybe there are little penetrations along the edge that are letting in more water.  

I'm not worried about it.  I'm just so new to slabs that the way this behaves is making me scratch my head a little.

Those Makitas get really good reviews everywhere I look.

So...move south.

Oh and bring your skid steer.  I might wanna borrow it.

Indeed it does wick, which is part of my angst about needing this drain.

I just thought it was weird that it fell at that top layer of blocks.  So much I don't understand about the way slabs work.

Yes.  Plastic under the slab.  Comes right to the edges.  But of course, it's not over the top of those header blocks. It's lying just inside that inside edge, under the pour itself.