Dan has made a start on the new back porch. One of the things he did in preparation was to watch dozens of Youtube videos of other peoples' builds. The conclusion was that there are dozens of ways to do it!
One of my first questions was whether Dan was going to remove the existing block and concrete porch. He said no way. Instead, it's becoming part of the support system for the new porch.
For the footer in the photo below, he was able to dig down before placing it.
They gray powder in the above photo is dry cement. This currently seems to be a very popular way of filling post holes, so Dan is giving it a try here. The idea is that rain and soil moisture harden it.
On the driveway side of the porch, the soil is packed down hard with gravel. Our driveway isn't paved, but gravel. Over the decades traffic packs down the stone and new loads are applied on top. Stones are pushed into the soil for who knows how deep. It was impossible to dig for a footer there.
In the above pic, Dan was able to level an area to set the concrete footer block on top. He adjusted the length of the post to keep the floor level.
And lastly, bridging.
Our choices for getting to the back door are to either crawl under the framing and then try to squirm our way between the joists to get up the steps, or use a ladder.
There are a couple of pieces of plywood to walk on to get from the ladder to the concrete porch. It's a bit awkward, so the next step will be to build the new porch staircase.
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