Progress

August 18, 2007

While I really miss the view to the forest that I've carved out of our four acres, I don't miss the trips to the land seeing nothing but a foundation. We have walls, we have floor decking, soon we'll have roof trusses and while everything isn't perfect...like the housewrap...I'm pleased to be able to walk into our home and in my mind's eye pace through the spaces.

Ready for the roof trusses

Sig, plugged in...

We ordered all of our flooring this week, save for the recessed cocoa matting at the mudroom and entry areas this week. Lead time on both the stone tile and wood floor is about a month. That should give us some time to shop for a tile saw...

Bateig Azul Limestone - 16"x16" honed, (cut to 8"x16")

Teak Stained Taun - prefinished

Tilt-a-wall

August 15, 2007
One of the two 80' walls has been framed. The plan is to fasten the sheathing while it's on the deck and assemble a mass of workmen to tilt it into place. I double checked all of the window centers and things checked out perfectly. I spend all day fussing over alignments, and happily these guys used my dimensioned plans. The remaining walls will be framed, sheathed and tilted up today and tomorrow. The roof trusses are in at the lumber yard and will be set on Saturday. We're already rethinking a few things on the interior partition layouts. More on that later.

South Wall

Advantech Decking

Framing begins

August 13, 2007
Our framing start has coincided with some very rainy weather here in Maine. What is typically our the driest month has turned out to be one of the wettest. Monday they were able to level the sill plates, a green plate (pressure treated) on the foundation and a regular plate on top of specifically for leveling irregularities from the concrete pour. In 80' we're out of level by 3/4"...all taken care of by the top leveling plate. They also set the triple 2x12 girder at the center of the 20' span and temporarily braced it. Tuesday they cut all of the concrete filled lally columns and installed those beneath the girder. They're using full 20' 2x8s to speed framing and lessen floor deflection (it changes it to complex beam instead of a simple beam, which reduces the bending on both mid-spans). I wanted to use 2x8s to frame the floor to keep the overall thickness of the floor construction to a minimum, again to keep the connection to finished grade as close as possible. Framing should move along quickly now as the only opening in the floor for the basement access stair has been accounted for and the rest of the floor is straight 16" o.c. sticks.

East end

South Flank

Ready, set, frame.

Looking East - Master in foreground
Looking West - boys' bedrooms foreground

Progress since last post...
-All slabs poured and foundation backfilled
-Water line routed to basement
-Sewer line connected to tank
-Rough grading complete

Issues...
-The Bilco outside hatchway access seems to be too high to fit the stairs with proper headroom to get into the basement. Hoping they'll sawcut it down by 1' or so to make access less painful.
-The basement slab needs some grinding where they were careless with overspray. Three pours means there's lots of opportunity for this sort of thing to happen.
-Minor crack in the basement slab needs a patch and an additional control joint to be sawcut.

Overall, things look smart. The grading is quite close to how I imagined it, barely any foundation showing. They promise framing this week, but I have my doubts.

Foundation work continued...

Wall poured, anchor bolts installed

Control Joint Insert

Foundation pre-slab pour, ledge in foreground

Basement Slab - Lift 2 (looking west)

Concrete trucks never leave your site without dumping all of their concrete. If you're lucky it's a 1/4 of a yard or less, however the more they have the more creative they seem to get: see this blog I've been following for a classic example.

Sunday July 29, 2007
This past week's weather didn't stand in the way of progress. Since our last update, the walls were poured, and a few days following the forms were stripped. The basement slab is 75% complete and we have temporary power. We're pouring the basement slab in three lifts because of the irregular terrain and ledge that we encountered. The first pour was the lowest level of the basement, followed by a pour yesterday which isolated the ledge beneath the living room area and created a step up beneath the boys bedrooms to accomodate the rising ledge at the east end of the building site. I expect tomorrow will bring the third and final pour for the slab. The concrete sub has carefully tooled control joints in the floor slab at prescribed intervals to control cracking and we've used a 6mil poly vapor barrier beneath the slab and ledge areas to prohibit migration of moisture. They also used a power trowel on the floor which produces an extremely smooth finished surface. The remaining dampproofing (the black bituminous coating in the photos) will seal out exterior moisture usually wicked in by capillary action.

Things to attend to during your concrete pour...

1) Finished top of wall elevation. Unless you want 4' of wall exposed when you backfill this is a critical thing to coordinate with your builder. We flagged a benchmark on site to be sure we carefully controlled the exposed foundation.

2) Be sure to use control joints in walls and slabs, your concrete will shrink, it needs a place to crack.

3) Drainage beneath your slab and at the entire perimeter is essential, lots of gravel and perforated drain tile will ensure you have a dry basement. We added a drain in the center of the basement slab as well for mechanical drain-downs and unforeseen circumstances.

4) Check your reinforcing. We still utilize the basic concept developed by the Romans today because it capitalizes on steel's inherent plasticity and strength under tension. Concrete works wonderfully in compression, but is terribly weak in tension. The steel is placed in wall locations that maximize it's tensile properties and works with concrete where it is weakest. Two rows of rebar top middle and bottom horizontally and 24" o.c. vertically placed nearer to the inside face of the wall combined with a 10" thick footprint and you have a strong base to build upon.

This week: first floor framing, foundation wall insulation, and backfill. Have to be sure to brace the foundation walls prior to backfilling esp. with such green concrete.

Pouring and curing

July 23, 2007
The weather was ideal for pouring today. Not too hot, not too cold, overcast skies. Perfect for allowing the cement in the mix to hydrate without the water evaporating too quickly. The reinforcing looked great, anchor bolts were set, all bond outs (sleeves for routing utilities from outside the foundation to inside) were in place. The forms will be stripped in another day or two and following that the concrete slab in the basement will be poured. The concrete will be green for a couple of weeks and the initial cure time is 5-7 days. The mix we're using is a 3000 PSI mix which means if we were to test it at 28 days we would expect it to be able to bear 3000 pounds per square inch. Our concrete supplier typically mixes on the high side achieving an average of 3300PSI at 28 days for a 3000PSI mix. The concrete will continue to cure over a period of a year or more. It's critical, esp. with long walls like we have, to be sure to place control joints in the wall assembly. Control joints are joints tooled into the surface of the concrete (in our case they're small wedges placed on the inside face of the forms every 25' or so). These joints 'control' where the cracking occurs as all concrete will shrink during curing and thus cause cracking.

Only a few items remain for the foundation work to be complete. We'll be waterproofing the outside of the foundation and insulating with 2" polyiso to keep the cold out. The rim joists will receive a 2" coating of closed cell foam we're looking for R-14 and a way to seal off air movement which is the largest factor contributing to heat loss in any space. The radiant tubing beneath the subfloor won't perform very well if it's constantly battling air movement.

Temporary power service is on the way, waiting for Bangor Hydro to hold up their end of deal.

Taking shape

Looking West

Still working on the reinforcing

add (2) #4s top/middle/bottom

A few more forms to place

One spot of ledge exposed in the basement

Thursday July 19, 2007

We're told the foundation will be poured tomorrow...not sure that's going to happen given the lack of forms, reinforcing, spot footings and two missing corners. The weather might not cooperate as well so perhaps a Saturday pour is the more likely scenario.

We ordered our windows today and expect them to ship from the Andersen factory on August 22nd. Time feels as though it's slipping away. If the pour happens in the next two days, the forms will be stripped early next week and the final slab pour mid-week.