Today was a change in the course we were taking. As we had limited man-power, I took a closer look at the trenching and made an executive decision. The 8'-10' remaining to be trenched was back-stopped by the trenching in the bathroom basement. So I decided it was now time to install the drain tile and start backfilling the open trenches with crushed stone.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Sump Pit Liner - Gift Shop Basement
A few weeks ago, I put out a call for two 45-gallon oil drums for the Gift Shop Basement (aka the Ladies' Waiting Room Basement). The opening into this basement measured only 18" wide and 30" high. Given that the diameter of a 45-gallon barrel is 24", we would have had a problem pushing a barrel through this opening. Recall that a 45-gallon barrel makes a perfect liner for a sump pit. So if we were to install a sump pit in the Gift Shop Basement, we would have to think of some way to get a 45-gallon barrel through that small opening. What to do!!??
Aha!! Split a 45-gallon barrel in half!! How do I get the two halves together after I've shoved each piece into the Gift Shop Basement!!?? Very easy! Cut two strips off of a second barrel, drill a whole bunch of holes, and bolt each half together using the two strips from the second barrel.
George W took on the challenge of finding two barrels. With a little bit of arm-twisting some of the businesses in downtown Sensational Smiths Falls, he quickly located two barrels. I trucked them into Ottawa to our secret machine shop and got Ross R to cut the barrels to spec. Here's Ross at our secret machine shop using a plasma cutter to cut one barrel into two halves. At first the air was very clear which is usually the case when using a plasma cutter.
What's a plasma cutter, you ask? It's simply an arc welder in reverse, only without a welding rod attached. The electric arc between the business end of the cutter and the barrel turns solid steel into a molten mass in the blink of an eye. A stream of compressed air blows the molten metal out of the way, much the same way an oxy-acetylene torch does the job, only with much less heat. A plasma cutter is one of my favourite tools!!
However, as he moved the torch down the length of the barrel, the paint heated up and started to smoke. There had to be at least 10 coats of paint on exterior of that barrel - but none on the inside.
The air soon filled with smoke so we had to take a break for a few minutes while the air cleared.
I then used my handy-dandy angle grinder to clean up the rough edges, lined up and drilled matching holes in the two halves and two strips, installed some bolts, nuts, washers, and lockwashers, and tightened them all up. Voila! A barrel that can be dismantled, pushed through the opening, and reassembled inside the Gift Shop basement.Neat, eh!?
There was, however, a fair bit of exposed steel that would quickly rust through, which had to be painted. Brad arrived on the scene this morning suffering from sore teeth as he had had a couple of molars pulled. So we put him to work sloshing paint over the exposed steel. (You can see the two strips of steel on the far side of Brad's leg.)
Stringing "Big-O" Drain Tile In The Baggage Room Basement
Meanwhile, Cliff, Bill S. and I were down in the basment stringing out the "Big-O" drain tile and threading it from the Waiting Room basement and into the trenches of the Baggage Room basement. At times, wrangling those coils of "Big-O" seemed as if we were trying to hold onto a big Anaconda snake from the Amazon jungle. However, we soon had the drain tile under control and into the bottom of the trenches.
Filling The Trenches With Crushed Stone
Our next step was to trek on down to the North end with a lorry, 12 buckets, and 4 shovels to get some crushed stone to backfill the trenches. At this point, George M decided to join us and gave us a hand filling the buckets with crushed stone. Not to sound like a record here, but if you ever install drain tile, the type of crushed stone you get is very, very important. This is 1" clear septic bed crushed stone. It's been washed twice at the quarry so it doesn't have any of those fine pieces of grit which is known as "stone dust".
The lorry that we use will only accommodate 12 buckets - 6 on each side. However, when you fill up a bucket, you have one heck of a lot of weight. And given that we're no longer full of the same p@#s-and-vinegar that we had 22 years ago, throwing those pails of crushed stone around is no easy job!
Once the pails are filled, we put them on the lorry, wheel the lorry back to the station, and unload the pails onto the edge of the station platform. One-by-one, we then struggle with a pail to the door going down into the basement. Walking a pail down a flight of stairs is no easy job. And once we've got the pail down into the furnace-room basement, the job is only half done! We next lug the pail through the opening into the Waiting Room basement, across that basement, and into the Baggage Room basement.
Here's Bill S. sticking his head into the Baggage Room basement with a pail of crushed stone.
And here's me emptying the pail into the trench.
We managed to make two trips - 24 pails of crushed stone - before lunch. This is the trench work that we managed to fill. It doesn't look like a lot but those trenches are 18"-24" deep.
It's a case of that old story -
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
How do you fill a trench with crushed stone? One pail at a time.
We all had personal business to attend to after lunch so we called it a day. We'll be back at it again next week.
As I approached Smiths Falls this morning, the rain went from light showers to a solid downpour - sheets of water pelting down on my windshield. And as I approached the museum, the rain came down even faster. As I got out of my car, I got soaked to the skin. What a way to start the day! It seemed like it was going to be one of those days where we wouldn't get a lot done. However, 2 1/2 hours later as I reflected on what we had done, I guess we did make progress.
Brad and Corey managed to get a few extra feet of trenching done so that we're now down to about 8' left to dig out.Cliff and I outchanged the burnt-out sump pump in the furnace room basement and got it working. To finish the job, I cut the electrical cord off of the pump and Cliff threw the burnt-out sump pump into the dumpster across the way. After that, we cut into the line in the furnace room basement, installed a Y and started to run some ABS plastic pipe into the gift shop basement.
As I had to leave early on some personal business, we only had about 2 1/2 hours of work but it was the kind of work that sets us up to make good progress for the next number of weeks. All in all, not a bad day in spite of the rain.
Notwithstanding that it was rainy and dreary outside, it was nice and dry inside the baggage room basement. Okay...... so it wasn't exactly dry but it was definitely a lot better than when we started 4-5 weeks ago..... when the clay was squishy when you walked on it.... when you knew that clay was saturated with an awful lot of water...... and definitely an awful lot dryer than when we first started this project back at the beginning of July. The sump pumps have definitely been doing the job of de-watering both the bathroom and baggage room basements. Hard to believe we started 3 1/2 months ago and only on Thursdays with about 4-5 of those Thursdays when we couldn't do any work for one reason or another.
It was only Bill S, Brad, and yours truly today on the end of the shovels as we continued digging the trenches around the perimeter. We weren't about to truck that heavy clay outside so we continued piling the clay on top of the rest of the clay. Hard to believe that two weeks ago (we didn't work last week) when we started that the clay floor was level. Look at what it looks like now!
Those pails in the foreground have done a spectacular job of helping us get the excavated material out of the basements and getting crushed stone back in. We've got about 15 pails and we can get a really good chain gang going - when we have the bodies. And that's our problem. Most of the lads have gone back to school (good for them!!) so we're down to 3-4 of us - at most - each Thursday.
However, with Bill S, Brad, and me on the end of the shovels, we made quite a bit of progress today as we got the trenching well past the 3/4 mark. The grey line indicates what we got done two weeks ago and the blue line indicates what we got done today. The dotted line indicates what we have left to do and, hopefully, we'll be able to get the trenching completed next week.
Just to give you an idea of what the trenching looks like, here's a shot of the trench along the side next to the track - the swamp side where the water rises and falls in the basement as the level of the water in the swamp rises and falls. We're well below the bottom of the swamp with our sump pump pit and trenching so water levels in the baggage room basement should be considerably lower than we've seen in the past.
That funny-looking blob that you see sticking out the left side of the trench is drain tile I installed 22 years ago. Quite a difference in the depth of the trench and drain tile we'll be installing next week! Here's a good view of the trenching next to the breezeway. Hard to believe but there's a fair bit of water that comes in from the breezeway side of the station. Since we've had the sump pump working for 3 weeks now, digging out the clay is a lot easier than when it was saturated with water.
That's part of our stash of plastic pails in the background. When we get some more help, they'll be put back into service to truck out the clay that we've been piling up.
While the side next to the main waiting room (the side towards William St) has been relatively dry because it partly drains into that basement, the clay still has a very high moisture content. After we get the the drain tile installed, the excavated clay trucked out, and the trench backfilled with crushed stone, the clay will start to dry out as the water table inside the basement drops even lower.
You can see the two planks we put across the trench to get in and out of the baggage room basement. Right now the baggage room basement is a construction work site so the standard safety rules apply.
Just before I left for the day, I took one last photo of that pile of dirt. That's one humongous pile we've dug out of those trenches, eh!?
Oh yeah, almost forgot. Just to make sure we stayed on grade with a small amount of slope to the bottom of the trench, I set up my laser level (you can see it in the background on the right) and checked the trenching that we had done so far. Right on the money!! Now ain't that damn good!!?
