September 2010 Archives

The first floor walls have been poured. Don't have any pictures of the process itself and it doesn't look much different afterwards, unless you look down into the wall cavity which is hard to photograph.

Some wondered how you get concrete down underneath the window bucks. The answer is simple: put a hole in it. As they do everywhere, a concrete vibrator is used to make sure the concrete flows into all the nooks and crannies but you have to get it down into the wall first.



Also, before the poured the walls, holes are cut and PVC or sheet metal sleeves are put in place for all the bigger penetrations (bathroom fans, kitchen exhaust fan, electrical service entrance, etc.) If its a small hole (under two inches in diameter), they'll just use a hammer drill later on. Here we have penetrations for two bathroom fans and one dryer exhaust fan.



Wood is good for lots of things on a construction site. One use is to cut it to size and then use it to verify your measurements. In this case, a note on the board indicates it is being used to make sure there is 8 ft. 4 in. between the top of the footer and the bottom of the floor joists. Add 4" of the concrete slab and we have 8 ft. ceilings in the basement.

We're ready for a basement floor. We had the walls, then the stone. Now we have a vapor barrier and metal mesh to reinforce the 4" concrete floor.

We're almost ready to pour the first floor walls.






And, if you were wondering (I was), they extended at least the one footer I could see.

They started on the first floor walls - then stopped because they had to wait for more ICF block to come in.

There's stone around the outside perimeter of the house, for drainage, and then covered by dirt backfilled against the exterior walls.







We also have a path for the water and sewer to get to the house.



Now that I can get closer, we can also look down into the basement. The lally columns are set, with most roughly center on the concrete footers below. However, the one at the front corner of the main staircase (and one other I couldn't see from upstairs) are on the edge of the footer. So, Frank is going to have to dig up the stone around the footer, chisel out part of the footer, put more rebar in the new opening and pour some additional concrete to make a larger footer.



We also have a Big Beam where the stairwells are and a dry well outside to help in drainage. Speaking of drainage, there is drain pipe along the inside perimeter of the basement. They put this in before the stone in the basement but I don't think we had a picture before.



And, finally for today, in case you were wondering... We have West Fraser LVLs holding up a Huber AdvanTech sub-floor.