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J. Clarke[_4_]

In article ,
says...

So today I drilled the holes for the sill anchors and rebar
I'd never used a real SDS hammer before and I'm impressed--a while
back I drilled three half- inch holes in that slab with a half-inch
hammer drill and it took me over an hour to do it it.

Several years ago I had to drill some holes through a concrete basement
wall to replace a broken water line. All I had at the time was a standard
rotary drill. It took a couple hours and I burned up several masonry bits
in the process. I got the job done but I really didn't know what I was
doing.

I later bought a Dewalt hammer drill and discovered it worked much better
for drilling holes in concrete, but it was still very slow. OK if you
just need a few small holes, but inadequate for big jobs.

A couple years ago I needed to split several granite boulders so I
invested in a SDS rotary hammmer. Wow, what a difference. Makes easy work
of drilling large holes in concrete or stone. I wish I had bought one
years ago.

Found out my blow nozzle had walked off so off to Home Despot for a
blow nozzle

Wouldn't a shop vac work for cleaning out the holes?

It's gotta be better than my first attempt... blowing into the hole and
having all the dust come back in my face. Learning experience, something
you only do once.

Yeah, I learned "don't lean over the hole".

The Sika instructions say "blow, brush, blow, brush, blow". Figured if
I was going to use the stuff I may as well do it right. I added an
additional "brush, blow" to that and was still getting crud out.

Besides, once you get used to having a compressor with a blow nozzle you
miss it--I was going to have to replace the nozzle anyway.

I'd never used a caulking-gun epoxy before.

Me either. The few times I've needed masonry epoxy I just bought the
little squeeze tubes from the home centers. Nothing fancy, but it did the
job for a few holes.

too cheap to spend for a powered gun, I did a bit of research and
found that they make guns with up to 26:1 thrust ratio

I know they have air power caulking guns and cordless electric models,
but I haven't used either type.

I've always bought the best manual guns available at the home centers.
Haven't run into anything yet I couldn't squeeze out with them.

When we built our house I bought one of those large sized guns that we
used to lay down all the construction adhesive for the subfloor panels.
For big jobs that's a lot nicer than squeezing out a bunch of small
tubes.

set the rebar and sill anchors.

Kind of late now, but for your small job I would think concrete masonry
anchors (the kind that expand in the hole to lock in place) would work
just as well as rebar. Could have saved the cost of the epoxy and fancy
caulking gun, but at least you have a new tool now!

I thought about those. I've used them before. Trouble is the local
suppliers (well, Fastenal did but I'd have had to take time off from
work to get to Fastenal) didn't have any threaded ones long enough to go
through the block and the sill with enough left to put a nut on. Once
the decision was made to set threaded rod for sill anchors, adding a
piece of rebar in each void space that didn't have an anchor didn't
really add much effort, and I've got way more epoxy than I need for the
job.

Glad you're making progress with your shed.

Anthony Watson
www.mountainsoftware.com
www.watsondiy.com