Drilling Concrete
As it turns out anchoring beams to concrete takes a lot of time and steps. The step we completed yesterday was drilling the holes. To make it go as fast as possible we rented a Hilti rotary hammer from home depot for $49. It was well worth it as it made quick work of the holes, turning what I thought could be a full day job into just a couple hours. The plans called for one anchoring point per concrete pier but we decided to put three anchoring points per pier for some extra wind protection, so we had 35 holes to drill. Last night we had a windstorm that knocked out power poles and trees around our town and was glad we decided to go overboard on the anchoring
When I was about 2/3 done the holes, despite wearing safety glasses, I ended up getting something in my eye. I think it was just concrete dust but it felt like something was in there. I finished the holes and when I got home tried everything to flush it out but it still felt like something was in there. After a 3 hour wait at the hospital to check it out they said they didn’t have the right equipment and materials to look at it but sent me to the local eye doctor so he could look at it. By this time it was around 8 pm and the eye doctor came from home, unlocked his clinic, and I met him there. He couldn’t see anything in there which was good so he put some dye in my eye and confirmed that something had scratched it. Apparently a scratch on your eye can feel like there is something stuck in it. He gave me a prescription for some eyedrops and said it should heal up in a couple days.
Next I need to clean out the holes to make a better surface for the anchoring epoxy. The recommended method is to clean it with a wire brush and blow the dust out with compressed air and repeat. It was hard to find a wire brush that was the right size so I turned this BBQ cleaner into a concrete hole cleaner. We’ll see how it works.
