Backfill, lumber, framing and slabs.

Oops. I guess it has been a while since I've posted an update, so here's a big one. Since last update:

1) The foundation hole has been backfilled. With the piles of dirt immediately surrounding the house gone, it really opens things up. I can now picture how our house will look with the grading of the soil. It is also nice not having to worry about falling into a deep pit when walking around the site.

2) Lumber has been delivered. Lots of it. I rented an 8000 pound capacity off-road forklift to help us unload the three trucks . The piles of dirt which disappeared when we backfilled, have now been replaced with stacks of lumber.

3) Finally got the power company to pass our conduit depth. This was a huge relief. It wasn't a huge deal, but for some reason this was aggravating me more than it should have. The third time the inspector came out to inspect the depth (after the two no-shows) the conduit wasn't deep enough. All the heavy truck and equipment traffic had packed down the road and we didn't have enough depth covering the conduit. We brought in yet more material for the road, had it inspected a fourth time, and finally passed. Now we will get the transformer install scheduled hopefully in the next couple of weeks. This will give us temporary power so we don't have to use generators.

4) Started framing. There are only two framers, Rich and George, but they seem to be going quickly. As of today they have the basement and crawlspace framed and have started putting in the floor joists for the first floor.

5) Passed our first electrical inspection. We put up the temporary power pole which houses the power meter and circuit breakers to be used until the house is all framed up. This power pole needs to be inspected before the power company will supply power to it. Everything looked great with the power pole, but he did notice that the ground rod we installed for the eventual permanent power had not been inspected before we poured the concrete foundation around it. Thank god I took pictures of it before they poured the concrete! I showed him the pictures on my computer and signed off on it. Phfew!

6) Poured concrete slabs for the basement, garage, and workshop. My Dad left me a bunch of insulating foam sheeting and old steel pallets from the grocery warehouse he worked at. I decided it would be a good idea to put the foam under the slabs for better insulation and to use the steel pallets as a reinforcing mesh. Last weekend my brother helped me put all of this in place in the shop. It was a lot of hard work as we had to cut all of the "feet" off the pallets so that they would lay flat on the foam. Once that was done, we tied PEX tubing down to the pallets to be used for radiant heating in the future. I intended to do the same thing to the basement, but we ran out of time and could only finish the shop.

Another thing we decided to do was use a fiber additive in the concrete. This adds strength to the concrete and will hopefully minimize the number of cracks in the slab.

Workshop before the concrete pour:And after:

Garage (with first few floor joists in background):
Basement (the pipe sticking out will be a floor drain):
I had them dump the remaining concrete in our crawlspace. Since the crawlspace is over-sized we are planning on using it for storage and it will be nice to have some solid floor:

Ready for backfill

I was hoping to have the majority of the backfill completed this week, but we had to delay the waterproofing due to the weather. We tried drying off the foundation with large torches, but every time the waterproofers showed up it would start raining or snowing which prevented them from applying the material. We finally were able to get the waterproofing applied on Friday which means we can start backfill on Monday.

The waterproofing itself is a thick rubber membrane which is sprayed on the foundation walls and the top of the footers. We covered the walls surrounding the basement and crawlspace with this to keep the water from seeping in.


On the tall foundation walls we also used a special drain mat which gives water a path to travel down the wall to the footing drains. This will keep most of the water away from the concrete. The footing drains will be installed on Monday before backfill.
While we were waiting for an opportunity to apply the waterproofing, we were able to backfill the inside of the garage. We will finish this off by placing a layer of pea gravel to pour the concrete slab over.
Besides the uncooperative weather, a couple other crappy things happened this week.

1) The power company's contractor who is responsible for installing our transformer stood us up for a second time. Our power conduit runs underneath our driveway because we did not have room to install it along side of it. Before they can provide power, they need to inspect to see that the conduit was installed deep enough. This means we need to dig holes in our driveway every 75 feet for them to verify the depth. Of course this interrupts work since trucks cannot drive down the driveway with the holes dug up. The first time I was given a 2 day window of when he would be out to inspect the conduit. We had the holes open for 3 days and he did not show up. This time he gave me a 3 hour window of when he would be out to inspect. He didn't show up, so we had to fill in the holes so the waterproofers could get in to do work. An hour later he showed up with similar excuses he had the first time. Our next appointment is Wednesday at 10am. As you might imagine, this is really ticking me off. I'm not sure what I will do if he's a no-show again. The excavators are going to be wrapping up this week, so it's my last opportunity to do this.

2) Somebody ripped off my chipper/shredder. While it sucks to have this stolen, it really sucks knowing that the jerk could come back and try to steal other things we might have around during construction. We will have to be more careful about locking things up.