Foundation walls

The foundation walls were poured yesterday. It's cool to see the house taking shape. It is somewhat disturbing because some of the rooms seem a lot smaller than we pictured they would be. I'm sure it's just an illusion since we have double-checked the measurements and compared it with the house we are living in. I guess we will find out for sure later this year.

We've had a streak of dry weather which has been nice for preparing to pour concrete, but it makes it very cold. We are going to leave the forms on the walls for an extra day or two to give the concrete more time to cure, and to keep the concrete warmer.

Footings are done

Rain or shine, we will get this house built. I showed up at the site to meet the inspector yesterday and discovered the forms for our workshop footings were halfway under water. The concrete trucks were showing up soon, so I scrambled to get the water pumped out in time. I was able to get all of the water pumped out before the inspector showed up and was happy we passed inspection without any problems.

Just a few minutes later the concrete trucks showed up ready to pour. I was nervous that our driveway wouldn't be wide enough and sturdy enough for the trucks, but they backed in with no problems.Today the foundation crew removed the footing forms and got started on the foundation walls. Hopefully we will be ready to pour the walls next week. The forecast shows sunny weather on the way.

Digging a hole

We ended up having to put an extra 12 inches of gravel on the driveway. Hopefully not all of the mistakes we make will be that costly. At least it's not all money down the drain since we have a thicker driveway which will hold up better to construction traffic in the wet weather.


The excavators are almost done digging the hole for the house foundation. This is a scary part of the build because you never know how far you will have to dig to find stable ground. Luckily we did not have to dig very deep, which means we don't need a lot of high foundation walls.

We decided to keep the majority of the crawlspace at the same grade as the basement. This will give us an 8 ft tall crawlspace we can walk into from the basement and use for storage, or even future living space expansion. I was shocked when I saw the hole for the first time as it is a lot bigger than I imagined it would be.

The foundation hole for our detached workshop is also done. There were some deep pits of unstable soil which we will have to replace with some better soil.


I don't think we will have a problem trying to find the extra soil. We have some huge piles of sandy soil as a result of all that digging. We have some even bigger piles of dark topsoil which will be saved to spread out over our yard at the end of construction.

I also spent quite a bit of time at the local hardware store yesterday trying to figure out all the plumbing pieces I need to hook up the required double check valve assembly on the water line which will feed our fire sprinkler system. This check valve prevents stagnant and possibly contaminated sprinkler water from back flowing into the drinking water supply. Here is what I came up with. Hopefully it works and passes inspection.