Slanted (Part II)

If interested in how this all came about you can read that story in 37,834 words or less in Slanted House Part I

This is the company we chose to do the heavy lifting. (It's all Japanese, but there are pictures!)

この会社は私たちの家を持ち上げるでしょう！

I was like a kid counting down the days to Christmas in anticipation of the start date to fix our slanted house. It was set for Monday, July 23 but Doh! A lady from the company arrived at our door on Friday the 20th and told it had to be pushed back to Aug 2nd. She'd driven all the way down from Chiba to speak with us and our neighbors. Our neighbors you say? Yes. Them too. It's a "WA" thing.  One must keep WA with their neigbhors. At least that's how I understand it based on 17 years here and what I learned from reading James Clavell's SHOGUN.  If you've read it you may recall reccuring references to "keeping the wa".

WA - 和 is "harmony".  The lady came down to speak with us and to go around and inform our neighbors that there'd be big trucks and workers around our house soon, which may inconvenience them. She apologized in advance for any inconvenience, noise, etc., and she handed out small gifts. It looked like she had towels in the box she was carrying. They were wrapped in white paper much like the move into a new neighborhood kinds of gifts that I wrote of.

Thus the big kid me's Christmas got postponed a bit but that's okay, it just gave me a few extra days to drive my wife crazy being sure everything was moved away from the house so the workers wouldn't have to tell us "We need to move this" or the like. I did enough remodels back in my framing days to know that making it easy on the workers makes for happy workers, and happy workers are more apt to say "Hey this guy's cool, do an extra good job!".

So I went about moving all the "engawa" decks I'd built outside every sliding glass door--four total--then of course I had to move the little girl's homemade swing set and also all of the little concrete and rock borders that I'd made to border the grass areas--I broke out pieces of those along with concrete steps and such that I had down in the narrow strip behind the house where much of the work was to be done.

The first couple shots below show the "back yard" side of the house, just outside the main living room sliding glass door. This is the place where the biggest deck I made sat.  It's about 8'x3' but I  purposely made it portable (two pieces base and top separable) when I rebuilt it a while back and glad I did it was no thing moving it. The distance between top of concrete and top of grass on far end is about how far the house needs to come up--just about 10 cm on that corner it's the second lowest point.  The other photo is a bamboo deck I made that I moved over against the bamboo fence so it'd be out of their way. I also did my best moving all the beach pebbles that I collected one bucket at a time and moved here from beach near my in-laws. I put them down around the faucet and knew they'd be digging there so filled pots with them and pushed the rest in a pile against the fence.

This next shot below is where I pushed the main deck, girl's swing set, BBQ and some other stuff over in the corner to get it out of their way. This shot was taken from the upstairs balcony at the end of their first day of work. The white gunnysacks are full of the earth they removed from first round of digging around the house; making space to insert jacks and injection pipes and such.

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Below is our house I added to it a bit with Photoshop--green spots are trees and shrubs brown blotches little garden. Their truck in next shots is parked in driveway next to the fence, the pool for drawing water is set up behind shed.

Most of the big lifting is in back between house and little canal with retaining wall

If you zoom in you can see how low each point is:

10 cm bottom right and 12 cm upper right are the worst spots.

This next map shows how much super ultra hard as nails quick drying Godzilla-proof concrete mix (my translation: not the patented name there) they'll be injected at each point. Basically those big ovals and circles will be huge chunks of concrete down under the house at various depths.

The estimate is 37,500 Liters total to do the job.

Still day one here's a shot of one of the hydraulic jacks down in the holes 

It's now Monday, August 6th I just got in from teaching morning classes to find the crew hard away at work now on day 4. According to the foreman (now inside the house checking progress with two lazar levels set up) the heavy lifting will come today and tomorrow, and none too soon since Typhoon 13 is due to hit this Wednesday! It's currently classified "strong" and is on a direct course for our kitchen table!  I hope they can get a lot more lifting done before it hits and it doesn't delay their progress too very much. 

Below are a few more views from around the house that I took during the first few days of work.

Injection pipe inserted center of our entryway. They use a grinder to cut angles on the insertion end so they can poke it down more easily. I think they inject water or some solution too to help force it underground. Once at the desired depth they start pumping the concrete, adding length to the back of the pipe as they go to go deeper.

Close up of one of the hydraulic jacks. These are used for stabilization and to assists the lifting but will later be removed

The step in our entryway has pulled away from the wall.
You can see the line from where the baseboard was originally on top of it.
Hopefully soonit'll be pushed back to original position with no gap. 

Looking down into the backyard from upstairs balcony.
There are two pumps in the pool, hoses go to the truck where material is fed into two hoppers then two hoses lead to the injection nozzle where water and material is mixed as it's injected, or so goes my best understanding of the process thus far at least. I spent hours pouring over documents in the packet they gave us along with the contract and good gosh it's chuck full-o difficult kanji! This whole ordeal has increased my motivation to become slightly less illiterate in the native tongue as well.

View of our driveway from upstairs bedroom window
truck and pallets of material.

My sole looking up out of the hole hydraulic jack selfie of this tale

Weeks before work started back when we signed the contract the company president was here. I took him out back and showed him how the concrete retaining wall had pushed out a good 2" to 3" when they did my neighbors house. Thus I was pleasantly surprised to see that they braced the shit out of the retaining wall behind our house before the pumping began. Now at day 4 those 4x4 timbers have some pressure on them and then some. Good idea! 

View from the street

Oldest boy child helping me inspect the work after day 2 or 3

View from upstairs window of my little man cave office room. You can see the long pipe inserted in the middle (click to enlarge photo) it's now all underground with a new length attached to it they went danged deep back there.

The foreman is inside the house most of today, lazar levels set up pink tape on wall is where he marks the progress.

Boys being boys gotta check out the truck they leave it here at night. Side note about that: My father-in-law came for day one of construction since my wife was out of town and I was gone at work. He showed them where we keep the hidden key if/when they ever need to get in while we're gone. I've left a few times and told the guy move whatever you need do what you need to do. They all leave thousands of dollars worth of tools lying against our house at night. I offered them space in the shed if they feared anyone stealing them.  Nah, that's so rare here we don't worry about that. It's nice. It's how things should be. Not yours? Don't take it! But of course climbing on it is a must! 

elapsed time...

I'm not sure how many days have passed since I wrote and published the above. That truck sat in our driveway for days and nights on end, as did the "swimming pool". Workers showed up at 8:00 every morning, eight the first few days then down to six for the main pumping and jacking and finally just a few for adjusting things like doors and the center of the living room floor.  

 Of course with any big construction work things will come up that I'm not so hot about. The need to replace the posts under the floor girder beams is one of those things. Above is the new adjustable posts that have recently been installed. Below is how it was--termite treated Japanese cypress posts tied together with true 1x4 cypress bracing. They removed all of that and put in the above, which I noticed only cost 398 yen a piece. How good can those be? Adjustable yes, but definitely not as strong as it was. The bottom picture there is one I took before the guy installed the new ones. I'm just in from teaching my sole morning class and have a good chunk of time before afternoon classes so today's project will be going down under the floor and reinstalling the original cypress posts alongside the adjustable ones and re-bracing it all, so it'll be double posted in the end. 

The way it was

After they pulled out all of the cypress posts under the girder beams

The way it is now after two trips down under the floor with hammer and skillsaw cutting posts to fit alongside the adjustable metal posts. This is the most recent shot after spending a few more hours down there yesterday (Aug 15) putting in the last few pots and bracing the hell out of it all. It's now at double super earthquake resistant floor status.

Self pat on my back note about work done under the floor. The foreman, who I ended up taking a liking to and got to know pretty well, he was the one who did all the inside work. I couldn't help but notice a hint of happy relief on his face when I showed him the door I'd installed under the stairs after he asked where the access point was. For all they do right, one thing aobut Japanese houses is access points, both under the floor and crawl holes in ceilings, aren't always so great. But for him, and again patting my own back thanks to old carpenter me, it was easy shmeasy Japanesey. Add to that the under the floor mobility machine I made and, while showing emotion isn't a huge trait of most Japanese, a shot of happy definitely lit up his face when I showed him the little 2' x 16" plank with small casters on that he could lie on and pull himself around under the floor to keep from having to crawl. 

"これを作りました。是非、使ってください"

"kore wo tsukurimashita. zehi tsukatte kudasai" (I made this by all means please use it) I told him. Yup that was a crowd pleaser for sure. As mentioned, If there's one thing I know from doing countless remodels in my framing days it's making it easier on the workers means the workers will be all "Hey this dude's cool. Do a good job damn it!"

While I'm telling about the workers another word or hundred is needed about them too. All in all they're a great crew, albeit not quite what I expected. Three of them had to have been well into their 70s if they were a day; I wouldn't be surprised to learn the one older guy I talked with the most is well into his 80s. They hauled hoses and carried big heavy sacks of concrete mix up to the platform to pour into the hoppers up on the back of the truck. The pumping and injecting part of the work is all done now but I imagine I'll hear ghosts of their voices drifting in from outside the windows for weeks if not years to come...

namba uone su-to-pu! (stop number one)

Namba tsu oke- desu (number two is okay)

Every day I'd take them things like chilled watermelon, cold cans of juice or salt candy. They'd accept it all gratefully with the customary "Itadaki-masu" before eating. And as said I took a liking to the foreman too. He was the youngest on the crew save for a couple young laborers, maybe early 30s if that I could relate to him somewhat thanks to being in his position myself to some degree back in my framing days. 

I was one of the cleaner cut guys on the crew back then, still had all my teeth and fingers and such (California framers are often a sordid lot) so I got the job of entering the house and talking with the customer on remodel jobs even before I was the most experienced or put in charge of the job. This guy knew his work; unlike myself back then he was likely a college or at least tech school grad who entered the company. Like myself back then he got put in charge of guys who'd been doing it far longer than he had. He showed them respect through, and from my outsider view they went far easier on each other than workers on the typical California framing crews do. (e.g. not once did I see a new guy get sent to the tool truck for toenails or bubble fluid for the level) And since he was in the house as much as he was after a while he got to asking about some pictures on the wall, like the ones of Yosemite--about where I came from and why I'm in Japan and the like. So he got to know me and I him. He wants to visit the States himself one day and now Yosemite has been added to the list of things he'd like to see. 

This first shot is a just about up to level view of the back of the house. Note how far the gas pipe has come up out of the ground. All of the rain gutter downpipes broke, as did the water pipe at the back corner, during the lifting. They repaired them all of course. And being my father's son--son of a guy who knows the value of things and isn't afraid or too proud to pick up something of value on the side of the road or ask for it--being that guy I didn't hesitate to ask "Are you going to throw away those 4x4s?" Knowing this culture and the fact that they can only haul so much to their next job (They were going up to Chiba after our place then all the way up to Hokkaido after that) I figured they'd just haul them to the dump, which it turned out was exactly what they were going to do. 

Thus I said "Oh please just leave them in my yard". Albeit already cut one would pay well over $100, likely closer to or more than $200, for that many 4x4s in this land and what the heck I'm paying for this so I'm keeping them! (As of this writing my main deck has already had the front three legs replaced before putting it back into place by the living room window) I also got a few sheets of plywood and of course told him just leave the termite treated cypress posts down under the floor don't you dare haul those off to the trash.  So here's the back view.

And since they finished back there I had to rebuild the bamboo planter that they had to bust the corner off of.  A couple years ago I learned the hard way that what everyone says of bamboo was true. It'll grow like the dickens and end up everywhere if allowed to do so, so I poured a little concrete planter against the retaining wall.  Then once the house was lifted in back I realized it needed to be taller as well so I built forms to pour more concrete on top of the original and rebuild the end they busted out.  

About those forms though, and this is another I know I'm my father's son and damned proud of it explanation. I didn't have any old wood to build the forms with and didn't want to go buy two new 1x4s at nearly $4 a piece to make it with, but as luck'd have it I recalled seeing that some idiots had illegally dumped some in a small stream alongside a dirt road not far off. I saw it when out for a walk with my daughter one day, so just peddled down there quick and climbed down the side of the little bridge, fighting mosquitos and spiders all the way, to get two of them.  They worked like magic for getting my forms built and afterwards I cut them up in disposable lengths per Japanese garbage rules and they went out with this morning's trash.  Done deal! 

You can see where they busted out the corner of the bamboo planter in the shot above. You can also see the worker at the end down there--one of the guys who was well into his 70's if not 80s and was, in the words of my oldest Great Brother, "As tough as a boiled owl!" 

This is the jimmy-rigged DIY new form made out of 1x4s I found that some ignorant pukes had dumped illegally in the stream nearby.

And below is the same stripped of the forms. Funny thing about that too. They had two types of super concrete, one of which had "5 seconds" (i.e. super quick drying) on the bag in kanji. When I got to digging, or re-digging where they'd filled in dirt around the foundation I dug up little bits of it that'd spilled. I guess it only hardens when it hits concrete since it was still a bit moist but man when I went to check the forms after pouring the new bamboo planter wall they were hotter'n the hinges on the gates of hell.  And hard too. It'd only been a couple hours but that puppy was set like stone. So I stripped off the forms only to find they were even hotter down below, though I'm not quite sure what exactly is hotter'n the hinges on the gates of hell but I tellya they were that hot. So I can only guess that merely mixing with little bits of that super five second harder'n nails concrete additive stuff sped up my bamboo planter building quite a bit. 

Then next shot below is after putting in some new stepping stones, some kinda super dirt that becomes hard like concrete and a few bags of rocks (yes, I bought bags of rocks!) but hey looks nice eh!   

Off the top of my head there are only about 47 more jobs to do now that the house is all sturdy and level so stay tuned for more newly un-slanted house renovation blog entries, and if you happen to cross paths with my wife tell her this is really important stuff we need to get all those little (and a few quite big) jobs done so just let her husband go to it he'll get around to folding the laundry in time I'm sure.  HAA!