Week 13 – Completion of the Main Story, start of second story

Day 91 – It’s been a while since I updated the blog but we’ve been busy—family, work, home, opening day of crabbing season—a man has his priorities eh?  The basement has been rough framed and the main floor as well.  This week we start the framing of the stairs to the second floor and laying the second floor joists/plywood floor.

Let’s recap where we have been the past 6 weeks:

1. Completed all interior walls of the basement; including the stairs to the main floor.  We had a minor “change order” for the stairs—instead of walking into the mechanical room and then making a hard 180 degree turn to the upstairs, we added length to the stairs and shortened the height of the landing deck in the basement.  This resulted in less stair treads in the basement and allowed us to have dual exits—to the mechanical room and the garage.  We had to give up the linen closet in the hallway and move it into the second bathroom—we’re ok with this.
2. Main floor had lots of framing:
1. All exterior walls and windows
2. All interior walls, including kitchen, great room, hallway, Den, bathroom 2, master bedroom, master bath, master dressing room, laundry room, pantry, north and east entrance (read; lots of 2x4’s!)

Some updated Photos:

Interior basement stairs

Main floor (looks small)

Big blue working on the first wall in the master bathroom

Rear(east) walls

From the vineyard

Mainfloor Panorama

19”x 5 ½" x 24’ beam – biggest in the house

Supervisor and Troublemaker

Until next time ...

Week 7 – Final backfill and start of basement framing

Day 49 – This week our excavator Matt completed his work on the backfill at the jobsite.  This was Matt’s last task before he removes his equipment.  The grading of the site turned out very well and if we would have got help from Mother Nature, the site would be mostly stable soil—except we still needed to wear the barn boots!  Maybe the rains will go away in June. J

The best part is that we received our initial load of lumber from Cascade Lumber here on the island.  Dave got the lumber organized on the driveway as the driver removed it from the truck and brought it up our driveway with their 3 wheeled lift.  Various sizes of 2x, 4x, 6x, I-joists, CDX plywood; glulam beams, Douglas fir beams --- what we’ve been waiting to see.

Dave was able to get a lot of the basement framing completed.  I helped by getting some of the larger glulam’s up and in place with our tractor.  Sorry I do not have a picture of this; but I do have a photo from our barn raising where we did the same thing.

Next week, continue the basement framing:  I-beams, west side framing, maybe some plywood flooring … it’s so nice to see lumber!!

Have a good week all.

(Double click to enlarge image)

Back fill and view looking to the SW.  Note: downspout drains and low voltage phone and Cable wire, mechanical room in the foreground; garage starts where the black tarp is; just to the left of the tarp is the stair locations to the main floor.

Tractor resting on the slab ... ground was soft. 

Can you spot the garage door location?  Note the trickle of water coming from the new foundation drain--this will be buried later. 

Crawl space in the foreground interior framing in the background 

How we installed the glulam's with the help of big blue (This is the shop bldg)

Week 6 – Completion of the foundation, backfill, & prep for wood carpentry!

Day 42 – Probably one of the longest weeks yet;  but, it culminated in the completion of the foundation—probably the most important part of the house.  If you screw this up, the house is bad.

The week started with Stanton Company dropping by to spray the back side of the foundation wall with the black rubber compound which is supposed to prevent water leaks from penetrating the interior.  This process was pretty quick as they arrived around 830 on Monday and were gone by 1030.  The toughest job was getting the spray in the right locations.  Here a couple of shots of the in process and some final results.  No issues here, it was a darn good job by a company who know how to do it.

John - Like a Monkey

NE Corner, all sprayed

Next step was the drain rock.  Drain rock was specified by the engineer to be filled to a level of 14” high—this is over the PVC drain pipe that is wrapped in netting.  If you can imagine the foundation wall, all of the excavated dirt piled behind it, you quickly realized that it was not going to be an easy job getting the rock around the foundation.  So how did we do it?  Did we bring a truck load of south of the border laborers to carry 5 gallon buckets back and forth to each location?  (The thought did cross my mind J).

Dave came up with a great idea to bring in a company and conveyer belt system which has a big hopper.  The trucks which go to the quarry, bring the load in and dump it into the hopper; the hopper, dumps the rocks onto the conveyer built which can extend or contract many feet and can launch rocks several yards into the air.  The idea is you built a plywood screen, run the conveyer to the screen and let the rocks drop next to the foundation.  I did not get any pictures of this but it was a one day process and save loads of time.  The cost of doing this was around $700 but there were truly no better ideas based on the way our job site was arranged at the moment.

Next came the soil we excavated and Matt the excavator guy, used his big Hitachi Excavator and a special rake on the end of the arm to scrape the soil piled up around the job site and into the exposed wall area.  That process took the day and most of the next to complete.  We now had a rough back fill with the exception of the west side (low end) and that will be completed the following week.

The main deliverable for this week was the slab pour and we prepped for this by bringing in 9 truckloads of sand and used this as the base for the pad.  You might remember from an earlier posting we dug too deep in the foundation area.  This is another place where this caught up with us and we had to pay to bring in dirt from the outside to ensure it was compactible.  Once this dirt was raised to the level we needed it was on to scheduling the pour.  I should point out the method in which we measure the height of the slab is done by pure measurement from reviewing the height of the lowest wall point.  We then use a laser which automatically determines the height from any location and allows us to draw an even chalk line around the perimeter of the foundation—for those math challenged, don’t even think about doing this without a laser.

The next day (Thursday) was the final pour day and Ralph (remember the pumper truck?) was there and setup his rig by 7am.  Dave said he got there at 6am, and I was a little more pedestrian and pulled in from my commute from Seattle at 730 just in time to see the first truck emptied into the slab.  We had 6 full trucks to pour that day and it was expected to take 3 hours—at least that is how much time we had scheduled for Ralph and then it went into overtime. Not good when his hourly rate is about $300!

We wrapped up the pour by 1130 and Dan the concrete guy started the fine finish work on the overall slab.  Some pictures of him riding around on his little knee skates—pretty fun.

On Friday, we needed to seal the slab—it was sunny and warm (no fooling, temp was close to 70!).  Dan told me that I needed to paint the slab using this special sealant.  You buy it in a five gallon bucket, pour it into a painters pan and literally roll it on with a nine inch roller.  I started this work around 630 and was done by 830—approximately 1,000 sq ft of floor.

So that is how the week ended, now we close the chapter on the Foundation Phase and begin the real construction phase of building with wood. 

So for next week here is our task list:

1. Continue with backfill, second phase, some areas will be completed while other areas will need a little more polish.
2. Connect drain lines from existing septic swale ditch and connect line to the culvert on the county road.
3. Layout the paint lines from the county road where the gas line will run to the house.
4. Order lumber materials for basement walls & stairs.
5. Call for inspection on the Radiant Floor manifold in the basement with Island County.
6. Install sill plate material on top of foundation wall.
7. Possible rough in wall in mechanical room in basement.

Have a good week all!

Week 5 – Foundation Floor and Radiant Heat Installation

Day 35 – The weather is not cooperating but we are managing to make progress on the foundation.  Most people don’t ever realize how import the foundation is to the home—once you have a bad foundation and leaks in the basement, you realize all too quickly its role and importance in the overall home build.

This week we completed the pour for the foundation walls which we had originally planned for last week, but the weather held and we were able to do this work on Monday …. 6 cement truck deliveries and I thought it would never end—Ralph (remember the pumper guys) kept the big rig moving right along and the forms kept eating concrete.  We finally got to the end of the forms … phew; it was 3 hours of hard work for the foundation team.  They walked along the top of the wall like monkeys!

Here are some sample photos of the concrete pour and the results!

(Double Click Images to enlarge)

So now what – the basement floor is not poured yet and will be the last keystone in the foundation phase of the project.  Remember when I told you about the excavation dig and they had made an error and dug too deep?  Well this is where I meet my maker and we have to fill the basement floor back up with compacted material (the material we removed cannot be returned to the site unless certified by a soils engineer to a precise compactness—forget it, it’s cheaper to just buy dirt unfortunately L ). 

Nine truckloads of sand later the site was filled and tamped/compacted—this took a full day.  Matt the excavator guy was a key player on this task also.  He went to the Camano quarry and picked up the sand in his large dump truck (he also said he picked up a little more and he told me he could be fined an put in jail for driving an oversize load—so don’t say anything to anybody about him driving 5 miles back to my house with an overloaded truck—we could have had to make 13 trips for all I know).

Now that the sand was all in, we had to prep for the radiant flooring.  The diagram below shows how this will work; the layering goes like this:  compacted sand, vapor barrier, polystyrene insulation, wire mesh,  PEX pipe is attached to the mesh and finally the concrete will be poured to a level of 4”.

Dave Turner one of my longtime friends and former professional triathlete offered to come up to the hacienda this weekend and assist with the layout and installation of the PEX.  The layout was designed into 4 zones; each zone was connected to a manifold; the manifold will be connected to the boiler via a series of tubing /pumps back in the mechanical room.  Below is the rough in design as given by my supplier Janes Infloor Co.

CAD Diagram Basement Radiant Flooring

Even though I had studied this part extensively, it definitely underestimated the effort it took to install the PEX pipe on the wire mesh.  I thought it would take 3-4 hours (1 hour per zone) and in reality we started at 11am and completed at 7pm!

The layout starts with the ¾” tubes which come from the mechanical room (boiler) to the 4-port zone manifold.  We basically free formed the route from the boiler and laid the manifold pipe to the zone manifold; the route would take us to the future location under the basement stairs.  We also spent about 45 minutes before we started by outlining surveyers paint outlining each zone (bright orange paint in the pictures).  Bear in mind the CAD drawing and the "as built" plans could possibility be different and as we learned it was going to test us later in the “red zone”.

We started with zone A-2 (green) first and it was the furthest away from the manifold.  You're inclination is to just string a pipe from point A to B; however, in reality you need to follow the computer selected algorithmic path to ensure that you do not overlay pipe from another zone.  Try locating the manifold on the CAD drawing (hint:  it’s the red bar under the stairs) and then follow the green line from the manifold to zone A-2 using the arrows and then trace it all the way back to the manifold.  Each zone was layed out that way.

Installation of the pipe consists of uncoiling a 300 foot section pipe—each foot of pipe is marked by the manufacturer with the length relative to zero so you can understand how much you have used (or how much pipe you have left).  No zone can exceed the 300’ level—the payoff idea is that warm water from the boiler will cool as it loops through the pipe; if it’s longer than 300’ then you diminish the heat and therefore render the loop useless in the latter length of pipe.

As we were completing the installation of zone A-2 we realized that the CAD diagram and the actual install were not matching up—we were ending up with less loops than the engineered diagram.  This was the beginning of the customized install where we had to make up the zone area as we went along—it sounds complicated but really not.

The order we laid the pipe was zone A-2, A-4, A-1 and finally A-3 the red zone!  As it turned out the red zone actually extended all the way to the wall on the south; zone A-4 did not extend all the way to the wall on the east.  Since the red zone was only 140’, we averaged the zones and most zones ended up being around 250-275’ in length.

Once the zones were installed we had to pressure test the system before we laid the concrete--if there was a leak in the system we wanted to know now rather than wait until the concrete had cured.  This process involves hooking up the supply and return manifolds, using a "shark byte" fitting to connect the boiler supply/return pipes, and all of that was then connected to a compressor via a plain old brass valve (picture bike inner tube valve) and then filling the system to 50 PSI … this test for leaks will be successful if the system retains the 50 psi pressure and does not drop over a period of time.

Here are the photos:

2" Polystyrene Insulation

Wire Mesh over the Polystyrene

Two zones installed with 1/2" PEX pipe (Note:  look closely on the far wall, the 3/4" pipe will ultimately attach to the future boiler)

Four Zone Manifold

Final Test at 54 psi maintained for 24 hrs (notice the rain, it was a nasty early evening)

Zone A-2

The "Red Zone"

I’m happy to say we passed the first time and the system was still holding 54 PSI the next morning, that’s a big Yippy Skippy! J

Next week; we’ll try to see if the weather cooperates and we will pour the slab and have a few miscellaneous tasks before Dave (contractor) orders the wood from Cascade Lumber for the basement section of the house.  Wish us luck for good weather—we need two days without rain for the slab!!

Adios and have a great week.

(Special thanks to DT for a big help, job well done!)

Week 4: Foundation Footings and Walls / Pouring Concrete

Day 28 - First week of May and Mother's Day Weekend!

Dedicated to GRAM, she loved the beach!

Hey all, I hope you all survived the weather this week—I know if you live in WA state you will wonder if we are ever going to see Spring.  Lots of rain hit our region and we had impacts on the job site.  The goal of getting the foundation footings and walls poured was missed by one day—we had to take a weather delay this week due to the amount of water.  All in all, it was still a good week and we completed the pour of the footings on Monday and spent the remainder of the week, setting up the wall forms.  By Friday we had the forms ready for the pour which will happen on 9May-Monday. 

Ralph’s Concrete pouring is “the man” in the business if you want concrete pumped.  He made his first appearance (he will be here a total of 3 times) to pour the footings.  Here is what his “rig” looks like as he is setting up to pour.

Boom will reach 40 Meters!

 

So what other things did we do this week—we built forms for the footings; those were the 2x8 forms that were 16” wide.  The pour only took an hour and the remainder of the week was spent building walls out of the 2 foot by 5 foot panels—each panel is 1.25” and they are heavy and they coat them with diesel oil to prevent concrete for setting on them.  A picture of the pump operator is next showing the remote control panel he uses to follow the foundation team around the forms.

Here are some pictures of the finished forms (note the water accumulation)

 Sophie makes her mark on the forms --

More water, some area's were up to nine inches deep!

The sun is out and Dan is thinking about a beer after the day before!

Here are some pictures of some of the forms work for the past week:

Some of the panels were 5 high (i.e. 5x2=10')

Lots of rebar.  For those wondering this foundation will be billed out at just slightly over $10k (not including concrete and pumper truck)

Camano Blue Clay, we will have to plan carefully to get this extra material used throughout the job site.

Next week, complete the pour on the walls, break down the forms and remove.  Bring in the spray company to seal coat the exterior walls with impervious paint.  Prepare for foundation slab pour:  bring in rock and sand; tamper, lay 2" foam foundation insulation, and wire mesh used for strength.  The final part will be working on laying the basement radiant flooring with PEX pipe.  Wish us luck to get this all done next week--a bit ambitious but its doable.  Have a good week everyone.

Start of Week 3: Foundation Footings & Site Excavation

Day 21 

I trust everyone had an awesome week.  We made great progress on our job site this week; despite some wicked weather on Thursday.  The foundation contractor said it was just like a scene out of the 10 Commandments when Moses parts the Red Sea!  I don’t think I couldn’t write any words that describes the heavy rains & wind we experienced on the job site.  Thank goodness the weather has turned and back to “normal” weather.

So what did we get done?  Starting Monday, Matt and Dave got busy laying out the perimeter of the job site with marking paint.  They really don’t get this exact as the footings will be plotted a little later.  The idea here is to get enough dirt from around the forms the contractors can walk around on both sides.

The goal this week was to get the foundation footings ready for concrete pour.  So what really are the components of the foundation?  The footings are typically constructed in two phases—phase one (the one we are in this week) consists of digging the area where the concrete “foot” will rest.  The foot is nothing more than an 8” tall by 16” (our engineered specs, can vary with application) wide rectangular width of concrete extending the length of the area you need supported—in my example our west forms will be 60’.  The way the foundation guys build this is typically with 2x8 x 12’ length of framing material, connected end to end and strapped on the top and sides with special clamps and iron stakes.  Also, two pieces of #4 rebar is added to the form; once the pour is made additional rebar is added vertically which will connect to the wall (phase 2).  During the wall build, the forms contractor needs to layout the interior walls exact aligned to the building plans on top of the footing.  They use a laser and chalk line as a guide then they start constructing the wall forms.  This is what we will be doing next week.  Let’s continue with our phase one deliverables.

Matt hooked up the gigantic 5 foot bucket on the excavator and started in the NW corner-digging across to the south.  Imagine walking on the front deck from north to south.  Once we completed the west side you could start to see how much earth is displaced.  Matt was putting all the dirt inside the perimeter of the home.  Sophie points out how this works:

Notice we are starting to find a couple of rocks—they stay outside the job site and dirt begins accumulating on the left.

This process of digging with the huge bucket continues around the South corner and now Matt maneuvers the excavator towards the East.  For those wondering distances, the front (West) is 60’ whilst the North-South ends are 38’.  Matt soon rounds the corner at the SE corner and now the digging gets hard—reason being he needs to dig deeper and Matt now finds the famous Camano Blue Clay—this stuff is very hard.  Did I say this stuff was very, very hard?  The 5’ bucket can no longer make decent progress he needs to go back to the smaller bucket with prongs (teeth) to continue the dig.  This slows the pace but allows Matt to complete the East side; only the North end now but its quitting time and that will be the place where Matt begins on Tuesday.  If you look closely at the photo, we are now digging on higher ground than the area of the west; that is the 12% grade factor and we will be “stepping” the foundation along the grade—the east side will have a full height concrete wall; whilst the west side will be a short foundation wall and topped with framing (less expensive).  Did I mention concrete is now a $100 a cubic yard? (Whine!!)   

As you can see from the photos, it’s been a relatively wet week—just enough to make walking in the job site with rubber boots a must!  Tuesday we completed the perimeter dig and started digging in the interior spaces to their final grade. 

As you do this process, it’s literally an unveiling—each bucket of dirt yields just a bit more of the job site.  All of us were starting to notice something interesting beginning to show on the SW corner of the dig—the reason was, this was originally intended for crawl space and it’s starting to become clear the space should be developed square footage that should be added to the living area.  An on the job decision is made to do that after huddling with Matt and Dave.  This will add an additional space of 15x15 (225 square feet) to the basement for little $$.

Matt continues digging inside the walls and now has to put all of the dirt on the outside of the dig.  You might ask, why in the h-e-l-l didn’t he do that to begin with?  The simple answer is that the excavator arm does not reach that far, we only wanted dirt laying on the North, East, and South, none on the West where we will ultimately need equipment access.

By Wednesday Matt is done with all of the digging and excavating work.  I understand that at one point he had to go into Mt. Vernon (1/2 hour drive from Camano) to get new (harder) “teeth” for his bucket.

Thursday, Dan the foundation contractor comes in.  He typically works by himself and does the more exacting layout of the footing forms.  He spent Thursday doing that and by the end of the day he had finished the rough installation.

Friday was spent on installing the rebar into the footing—cutting, bending, and wire tie the lengths of rebar so it does not lay on the ground.  Rebar needs to be suspended in the footing to provide maximum strength.

By Friday, Dan is done and he calls for inspection on Monday with the County—this is the first of many calls that will be made to the county to inspect work on the project.  The footings are first and we cannot proceed to the walls until we get the green light.  Since Dan does this for a living there is no reason we won’t get approval for pour and that will happen as well on Monday.

Now for some more pictures:

Supervisors

Look ahead preview next week:  Concrete walls when the entire job site starts to take shape.