Haven't posted in a while but couldn't help but show pictures of my Bridge. I have talked about doing this for years and finally decided to do it 2 weeks before my daughters open house. Got it done and 8:30am on the day of her open house. BEFORE AFTER
Its all treated lumber. I will probably stain or thompsonize in about a month. We started the footings on Saturday morning the 14th, three guys total, and finished the whole thing on Saturday Morning the 21st. The footings took all day saturday. 42 80# bags of quikcrete. The arches (3) of the bridge were done by tuesday night and moved into place. The first arch took almost all day sunday just trying to figure out how it all went together. The next two took about 2 hours each. Wednesday I was on my own and leveled and shimmed, Thursday I decked it, and Friday it was the railing with the spindles being done Saturday morning. Total cost just a tad over $1000.00 for a span of 28 feet. No real problems encountered other than someone not reading the plans correctly on the joists. Also we had a swim raft the we had under the arches so they could be intalled. If we didn't have the raft, I dont think this could of been done unless it was winter.
Footings 63" wide with two 6" steps. Main part of footing is about 2 feet deep with two post holes going deeper. Soil this is built on is really mostly fill so the back of both footings were bunkered with approx. 6 bags of concrete and 6 basketball to beachball sized boulders. Most of the load is lateral and this was sufficent to make it really stiff. Here are some photos of footings and arches. We used re-bar we had laying around put in vertically (about 6 pieces 4 feet long driven into ground) and 1 layer of wire mesh in upper 3" of each step. Arches are NOT actually attached to the footings, just sitting on them with 16 ga. galv straps to isolate the wood from the concrete.
The plans area available from rainbow bridge. Do a google search for it. I don't know if I could direct link so I didn't. He has varying different arch lengths and wood sizes to choose from and answers all your questions without any hassle. (trust me I asked alot) Some of the plans have a higher arch than others depending on personal preference and soil conditions. Mine is 2' 7" of vertical arch rise in the center measured from the base of arch)
Its not how well you do something, Its how well you look doing it!
