Day 2: Did a bit more work on the brackets while the plumbers dug holes all over the place putting the water and sewer pipes in.
Day 3: Took a bit longer than I was hoping to get hold of the post supports for all the other structural posts for the shed, but they finally came through. Frustratingly unproductive day working out the best way to drill the holes, empty the concrete dust out of the holes (google suggests all kinds of silly compressed-air-in-a-can, air compressor etc ideas, but apparently all you really need is a piece of thin pipe and some lungs. Pro tip: it helps if the pipe is long enough that you can keep your face to one side and not get hit in the face with a plume of concrete dust….) and screw in some very serious-looking concrete anchors. Only got four supports done in about 5 hours, got so frustrated I didn’t even take any photos. *grump grump*
Day 4: Drilled another 3 holes before my drills started giving up the ghost in protest. Was about to go and buy a new drill, before I had brainwave and went down to Coates to see if they had something more suitable and walked out with this monster:
Oh, so THIS is the right way to do it. My (reasonably large, but still consumer-grade) mains-powered drill was taking about 10 minutes to drill each hole to 150mm, and freaking out every time it hit a bit of aggregate (and we won’t even talk about when it hit rebar). The Hilti took about 10 seconds to drill each hole, and you only noticed it hit aggregate from the puff of dust as it exploded. I like this toy.
So that increased productivity somewhat. Towards the end the tip snapped off the drill bit, but that only just slowed it down a bit and I got the last couple done with a bit of brute force… 🙂
