Garage slab, and a Dowser visits the site

Today the crew poured the slab for the garage and breezeway/porch. Another fine job by the folks from Covenant Concrete.  We had a bit of a burger-burn for lunch on site today which was a hit with all parties.  One amusing point in the days events was when the field mouse made a hasty exit from the house out the front door and across the wet concrete.  He met face-to-face with Clayton and decided retreating into the house was his best option.  We didn't get the benefit of natural footprints because this was still when the concrete was very fluid and hadn't been troweled to a finished state yet.

Clayton and crew working the first truck of concrete.  First truck showed up at about 7AM and Claytons crew had already been there for an hour or so doing final preparations (cleaning up where yours truly had moved the excess ABC off the ramp area)

View of the concrete from the East end.  

One more angle - again it amazes me the process for concrete as it moves from the very viscous stage on through the stage where the team power-trowels it and hand trowels the areas too small.  they cut the expansion joints in by hand and by this time, they were able to walk on the concrete (gently) without making any marks.  

The electricians pulled most of the runs they were able to today and will return once we're ready for things like the garage, deck, and kitchen.
The exciting news of the day was we contacted a dowser who offered to come to the site this afternoon.  He asked that we point out a moderately sized area to dowse which we did.  He also brought along some "toys" as he called them to see if any of us could get the feel.  He dowsed our new proposed location and found little indication of water other than near the pile of pulled stumps.  We moved up the hill a bit and he found a spot that had some potential.  At that point he handed me the two pieces of bent coathanger, coached me how to hold them and to my amazement, the rods turned outwards at almost the exact spot his did.    We spent a bit more time dowsing for a secondary spot and then moved on to a third spot which turned out to be so strong we moved it up the list to the number 1 spot.

 I'm not sure of the science behind this method but when you look at the NC State soils map and compare the location of the other wells in the development the prime spot fell in that same type of soil.  We even had the state inspector on site to ensure the wells were at the proper setback and she tried her hand at dowsing.  Much to her surprise there was a response at the same point the rest of us got some response.  To fine-tune the results we did some slower passes and the professional actually was able to determine that the water flowed in a South to North direction and could sense the width of the source.  We hope to put this to the test later this week once the State inspector gets us the permit - and we're sure hoping the strength of the dowsing reaction at the prime spot is another success for dowsing fans!

Tomorrow the garage walls and roof go up - the trusses, roof sheathing and wall materials were all delivered today   we're ready to start first thing in the morning.  After that we'll have the framers move to the punch-list inside the house (pocket doors, chase for HVAC, and some strongbacks on the ceiling for attaching the sheetrock/OSB.

The finished product - trusses and Zip roofing are at the ready for use - there's a 2" drop from the house end of the garage to the driveway end and the slope increases for the access ramp.  This was done in large part to accommodate the flow of water which currently is through the depression in the ABC just short of the concrete ramp.