Living the Good Life

BUILDING

I'm reading a great book about living the good life. It's called... surprise! Living the Good Life by Helen and Scott Nearing. There is a whole chapter about building with stone, using forms similar to concrete forms. Now I'm not the most handy man around. My son keeps mentioning how we start a project, then later start another project, and rarely finish one. So, although I may never try these stone building techniques, I do think it's rather intriguing and a very cost effective method of homestead building.

It got me to looking at the different buildings I pass on my walk to work. Many of the buildings are brick, some undergoing renovation after the earthquake of 2001. Even among the brick buildings there are many different ways to build, including vastly different brick sizes. There are also many buildings and other structures (stairs, pedestrian bridges, stadiums) which use a lot of concrete or mixed concrete and brick. All very well engineered and well thought out it seems. There are certainly a wide variety of building styles in downtown Seattle, and I particularly like looking at the older buildings.

Speaking of concrete, Metro Transit is working on a bus shelter near my home. From the pace of it, they are approaching the speed at which my son says I complete projects. They had dug a hole and put in forms to pour a pad. There were minor changes over the course of two weeks to the forms. Next thing I knew, they had expanded the hole and forms to nearly double the size of the pad. I don't firmly understand concrete construction, but the form looked very elaborate for a simple bus shelter pad. At least a week later, we had a pad to stand on. It has now been almost two weeks with a bare pad. I don't see any methods to attach and shelter supports; I suppose they'll just drill right into it. I just hope it's done before the summer is over.