Court Walls #1

On Monday we had a meeting with the general contractor, the head mason, the site supervisor, and the architect. Mostly we wanted to make sure the mason was aware of the wall tolerances and answer any questions about the structural plans.

The head mason has been laying brick for over 30 years and has some seriously beefy and calloused hands. Usually when I'm around these guys, I keep my soft, pink hands in my pockets for fear I would be laughed off the job site. Anyway, I think we can trust this guy to meet our tolerances.

The first thing the masons are building is the headwall for all four courts. In our case, a single wall 84ft long and 15ft high with expansion joints every 21ft. Again the tolerances are very tight: 1/8inch of plumb and straight over a 10 foot area. By the end of the day, they got about 4ft up and when I arrived, PJ, the site supervisor, used this cool laser device that measures just how close to plumb and straight the wall really is. The first 21ft section was dead-on. The second 21ft section was off by just 1/16 of an inch. That dog'll hunt.

That's the good news. The bad news is the second delivery of CMU (Concrete Masonry Unit), or cinder block, arrived and 8 pallets are going to go back to the supply company. The court spec says that the block must come from manufacturer dry and be stored dry at all times, to prevent shrinkage when drying out. Eight pallets of block were wet all the way through and one pallet even had a bird's nest or two in some of the block. That block was most definitely not stored inside.

I went over today and the offending soaked block was taken away. I had a good chat with the head mason and he totally gets how important this part of the project is to us.