The concrete contractor we are using builds the piers on site. I have heard of having the cages built elsewhere and perhaps this is necessary when the piers are deeper or the cages bigger, like on a freeway overpass.

Here is the rebar they use for the uprights of the piers. It is extremely thick—much heaver than it looks in this photo.

Here is a pallet of coiled rebar. I did not try to pick up one of these things but I think they are quite heavy. These coils are used to form the “cross pieces” of the cages.

The crew member building the cages lays out four of the straight pieces of rebar and a coil. He attaches the coil to the four straight pieces with little metal ties that almost look like heavy, wire twist-ties.

Once the top of the coil is attached to the four pieces properly, the whole array is anchored to the ground. The bottom of the coil is hooked up to a chain on a truck and they drive the truck forward to stretch out the coil to match the straight lengths.

At that point, the cage maker goes along the cage, tying off each intersection all the way to the bottom.

Here is a pier hole. I was able to get this great picture using the flash on the camera, because when you are looking in, all you see is a big, black nothing. The auger bores such a clean hole, especially in our soil and rock.

Later in the afternoon, I watched the plumber and his assistant setting pipe for the master bathroom. The did not want to be on the net, but here you see one of them wheeling gravel to set the pipes in. They fill up a wheel barrow full of gravel—which is quite heavy—then wheel it across all the little bridges they have put across the trenches to where they need it.

At this point in the day, it was very hot—registering 97° on my car thermometer. Wheeling around heavy loads of gravel in that heat is not too much fun; but they seemed philisophical, the plumber saying that he thought we should enjoy it because soon we would be grousing that it was too cold.