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!