Carport to Flood Control!

Wednesday, 5/11/11 (continued)

Speaking of the weather, the day was pretty grey all day but as the day wore on it got warmer, more humid, and greyer. You could feel another storm brewing....tis the season I suppose. Sure enough a storm was moving in.  I could hear rumbling in the distance.

I kept working on the flitch plate finally getting it into place and taking time to admire my work.  Here are the pics I promised in my last post.

I started on one side and walked it up back and forth

When I got it to the top, I raised it the rest of the way with the floor jack and bolted it into place.

I set about removing all but one of the center support posts and then finally slowly lowered the jack under the last post.  While the flitch plate was doing it's job, I really started to have a nagging feeling that in spite of those plates, this was not going to be the column-less outcome I was hoping for, that structurally my beefed up beams were not going to be sufficient.

What I really wanted (and want) is that there be no support posts between the house and the street side edge of the carport, a 26' span.  In spite of my best efforts, if there was ever a time to trust my gut, it's now when I have probably several thousands of pounds of lumber over my head just waiting for a reason to come down on me or some expensive possessions at some unanticipated moment.  My gut was starting to tell me not to move forward....... 

By this time in the afternoon, the thunder clouds started moving in and the rumbling started increasing in volume.  Normal practice has been to work until about 8:30p or so when the sun goes down.  I hadn't been watching the time but it was getting darker so I decided to listen to my gut, step back from the project again to gain a renewed perspective.

I closed up shop for the day.  I started putting stuff away.  Just about the time I finished the first rains started to fall, loud and heavy.  And I watched it come cascading off the roof of the carport in a fairly consistent pattern across it's width....at least I did a good job of leveling the roofline.

 I also watched it come washing across the street and cascade down the gravel entry area in front of the carport.  Between that and the roof runoff, it really had no where to go except right at me standing under there.

It might sound like a calamity but in reality it wasn't.  It was educational.  Here happening live was the reason for the poor condition of the carport posts and the walls of the garage when I took them down.  Poor drainage control.  I stayed out monitoring the flow down past both sides of the house until the rain let up.  By the time I went inside for the evening, I thought it was about 8:30p but jeesh!, it was only 6pm.

Thursday - 5/12/11
Thursday was such a dreary grey day that I didn't venture outside all day.  I think I'm susceptible to Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD as they call it.  I lived many years in the NW and noticed it there.  It's a pattern of not feeling motivated when it's a dark and gloomy day.  Maybe crazy, maybe not....but no work accomplished this day....though I did spend a good part of it contemplating how I was going to move forward.