I was telling my friend, Ben Stein tonight that I'm single handedly keeping the local steel mill going just by the amount of rebar that's going into my foundations. Carson Benner from Cellar Ridge told me today that it works out to be about a mile of rebar. (Rebar are the metal rods that they put into concrete to give it more strength.) Ben really burst my bubble. He said that Cascade Rolling Mills here in town can churn out a mile of rebar in about 50 seconds! Holy *&%! That's a LOT of metal. But at least I kept some guys at the mill working for a little less than a minute. We're trying to do our part for the economy. This whole house lifting is an expensive venture. People want real money when they lift your house up, remove the old, broken foundation, install a new foundation, and then lower it back down. I think insurance alone eats up about half of the bill. Can you imagine being the insurance agent of a company that lifts and moves houses? The guys are making great progress on the foundation walls. They are now about nine feet high all around the basement. Tomorrow they will have to run lights under the house because they will have shut off all the natural light. Everything has been wide open and now they will start to shut it up again. It will be nice when the underside of our house is not open to the elements any more. We have a three foot square hole in our floor where the old heater use to be. All that separates us from the outdoors is a plastic shower curtain. You'd have to ask Carson, but I don't think plastic shower curtains have much insulation value. (I could be wrong, but it seems like a good guess to me.)
I've really been enjoying little things lately, things I normally take for granted. Like stairs. Stairs are a really nice thing to have--they beat the heck out of climbing up and down a ladder into your house. Indoor plumbing is another really nice thing. As I said, I don't like installing it, but I really enjoy having it (when it works.) And, as I said before, heat is very nice.
I was talking to Carson today about how pleased I am with the progress of the work so far. I also pointed out how great it is that we haven't had a garbage dumpster on sight yet. We've been recycling just about everything. Carson took one load of used lumber to the recycling center, I took another one. I've also taken four truck loads of material to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. They also take scrap metal which is really nice. I took over our old sawdust burner and I'm sure it weighed well over half a ton. Now it is in within the relm of possibility that Habitat took that metal to a wholesale purchaser in Salem, who sold it to Cascade Rolling Mills (since they use all recycled metal), who made rebar out of it, who sent it off to a lumber yard who sold it to my contractor, who installed it in my house. Isn't that a cool circle? Cellar Ridge is a very green building company, and if you are looking for a builder, or a contractor for a remodel you should look them up. And if you have any building materials in good condition take them over to the ReStore. It's a great form of recycling and is also a major funding source for building new houses with people who are in need of decent shelter. Have a great earth day week.