This week has been quite busy. We started out with some simple construction on Monday; we put together a sample connection to prepare for bolting together the monkey cage, the entry structure, and the shading structures. We used 5' long, 2" PVC pipe and 1/4" bolts for out test, and were surprised at the amount of time it took to drill 4 holes. The drill has to be kept perfectly straight and we had to attach each pipe to a piece of 2x4 so it wouldn't move during the drilling. Overall, we spent about 30 minutes on the project. However, the real structures will be made of 30' steel pipes which are 2 3/8" in diameter...and we will be using 1/2" bolts...and drilling on site. There are several hundred holes to be drilled. It's something to look forward to :)

Tuesday was spent on finishing our construction drawings and coming up with a framing plan for the deck thresholds. It took a while to come up with how the framework would actually work because we have three different sizes of thresholds-ranging from 17' to 9'. We wanted to build one frame to accommodate all the various lengths, so we chose to design a frame for the longest threshold only, and then move and cut the ends on site during construction.
Today we are finalizing and plotting all the drawings so that we can send them over to our civil engineer. The site has finally been surveyed, though there is a small chunk which the city is still trying to procure from a private owner. It's a problem because the chunk goes through the middle of our site, and it'd be really handy to be sure that we're actually going to have it. Hopefully before we start building.

And now I must study, for we have been informed that there will be a test over the construction drawings sometime next week. Good times