Footing String Nightmare | Forest to Farm

In this episode, Brian and Terry pick up where they left off fixing these horrible footings. Today, take you through how to install batter boards and keep these things leveled.

When you measure the diagonals, you don’t want one string down low and one high. Otherwise, you’ll have one of them a foot lowering than it should be and another one 6-8 inches taller than it should be. Also, that diagonal is going to get longer because now, you’ve created a distance up and down and not just point to point. So keeping everything on the same plane when you’re doing this will make all the difference.

But before they start doing work on the property, some surveying is needed. So the crew purchases a $450 Bosch laser level from Lowe’s, an excellent tool to get the job done. It’s an investment, but there’s peace of mind knowing you get your measurements right and that you don’t have to guess or try to use a bubble level and other crazy stuff.

You can call in a surveyor that will cost $250 easily, then another $250, which could jump to $400 the next time. So the laser level pretty much pays for itself.

Installing the Batter Boards:

The duo starts by going around the transit and making a mark at the same height all way around, all at the same level. It’s a rough mark and doesn’t have to be precise. Just enough to check and see if it’s level. If not, you can just average it out. Being off my 16th of an inch isn’t going to be an issue here.

They get one screw in just to make the process easier. You want to pull into the board when you’re doing this. This way, you’re not pushing all your force and flexing the stake. So take it home and counter yourself by bringing that up just a little bit.

Tune in to see how they set this up.

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