Second Course of Blocks

We had enuf of a slowdown for weedy vines to grow in the porch area. Last week, a big black water moccasin was in those weeds. One of the workers killed it and tossed it into the lagoon for the tiny fish to seed on. 
This end of the house will be the porches. These porches face Little Lagoon which is just a narrow strip of sand from the Gulf. 

You can see the rebar in place, extending out of this second course of blocks. It is wired to the rebar that is embedded in the foundation. This is the north east corner looking towards the south. The garage is this first area that you see in the foreground. 

Because I am using blocks that were originally made for a different house, we are doing a good bit of cutting. Personally , I think the work is going pretty quickly considering all the cutting going on.

The New Stone Age Builder crew worked all weekend. 

The crane is awesome...

I practiced a bit of my leftover Spanish w/ my Skyline workers. They seem like cheerful guys. At least they humored me :o)

This N.E. garage corner shows well the hollow centers of the concrete stone blocks and the rebar that is all tied together running throughout the walls both horizontally and vertically. A block will be cut to fit this corner before it is back-filled so none of this will show. The outside will be  the look of continuous cut blocks of stone. 

    Nice little video of a DAC-ART Block being set ..1 min, 22 sec. 

           
I was lucky enuf to spot a really intact BFI trash can that must have been underwater since the hurricanes. One side is rather clean and the other side is covered in barnacles. I still get trash pick-up twice a week, so i am hoping that by having two cans, I can get most of the construction debris up to the street to be picked up. I have been knocking off and scraping off the barnacles so they won't think the whole thing is trash and remove it. This will delay the necessity of having a huge dumpster...which is an expensive thing. OK....where is the WD-40 ??

One last note on this page. I have experimented w/ various plants this close to the salt water. My gut feeling is that all the online salt tolerance of plant info online has been based on fake circumstances and not on real experiments on salt water locations that include wind, rain, sun, salt air, salt atmosphere, etc.. Take note all you horticulturists, Portulaca is really a salt tolerant plant...Portulaca oleracea is the common purslane. Portulaca grandiflora is a South American herb, widely cultivated for its showy crimson, scarlet, yellow, or white, ephemeral blossoms.