One more concrete pour out of the way!

Wednesday, we poured the garage foundation and porch footings. Eric did the filling, while Skip did the trowel finishing. After the pour, we finished up all of the load bearing walls in the basement. We are ready for decking! Forms and many other construction tools on this site are provided courtesy of Skip's Construction Supplies Unlimited.

On the schedule: Thursday-form stripping. Friday and the weekend - 1st floor decking and basement stairs.

Porch Footings, Garage Foundation and Basement Framing

Over Memorial Day weekend with Eric's dad, my parents, Loren and Kyle's help, we finished setting the garage foundation wall forms (traditional forms), setting the porch footings, and framing some of the basement. This week: pour the walls and footings, and more framing.

Basement flatwork

We poured the basement floor 5/19. We opted for the load bearing wall basement instead of the steel post and beam basement, thinking it would be cheaper. Due the spread footings under the load bearing walls, we had to pour the floor before we could start framing. Now, I am not so sure this is the cheaper option with the additional concrete. Post and beam would be quicker and easier. But in 10 years when we decide to finish the basement, it will be half done...

Floor pouring is hard work compared to footings and walls. We hired Adam and Lance, two guys who do this for a living, to do the finishing with Eric and Eric helping with the manual labor portion. That first row somehow took 8 yards - half of our concrete order! Thankfully they had another truck available to bring a 3rd load since we would have been short. Perhaps it is a wee bit thicker than the 4 inches we planned on... The white underlayment is an insulation/vapor barrier called Ultra CBF.

Insulated Concrete Forms aka ICFs

ICFs are very cool. You use them in place of traditional concrete forms. If you want your 26 week pregnant wife to put in concrete forms, this is the only way. We used QuadLock ICFs (Legos for adults). I'd highly recommend them. They are very easy to set up. When you are finished pouring you have 2 1/4 inch styrofoam insulation on both the interior and exterior. You can build an entire concrete house out of them. We opted for basement only. The pump truck operator said our Quad Locks were one of the most solid ICFs he's seen. This is important because blowouts are bad...



Assembly. 4' by 1' panels connected by plastic ties.


Pump truck out of Dubuque Iowa


Eric fills the walls while the pump truck operator moves the boom and controls the flow.
Basement wall pour complete successfully with no blowouts...

Excavation

Yes, we started on the house. I'll try to keep posting new pictures of our progress and other tidbits about materials we liked or didn't like.

This is Eric digging in the backhoe. Excavation is definitely worth paying for if you don't have your own equipment.

It took a little over a week to do most of the excavating. The house on the hill who paid a sub contractor took 1 day.

This is me with my new best friend the laser level. Also included is Kodi who was not really enthusiastic about the hard rocks...