| The forms have been stripped and they've done all the fix-up/touch-up work to the walls which is the good news. The bad news is it's started to rain. Alot. We have to do the waterproofing on the concrete and while it can be damp, it can't be wet. Now this weather is good for the concrete curing, it doesn't help with project progress. |
| The concrete pour happened today. Really. Check the pictures! We have concrete walls!! We had to have the special 47 meter pumper truck to reach the far sides of the foundation walls. The main guy operates the pumper truck from a remote unit and the concrete trucks come and feed the concrete into the pumper truck. The pumper is a $800,000 piece of machinery. It's cost about $1800 to rent it for the 4-5 hours it was there. The concrete guys figured out that they put 1 yard less of concrete in the truck, it wouldn't spill as it as backing down the road to where the pumper truck was. No more spilled concrete. |
| Mark spent the day at the site watching the pour and doing some prep work for the drainage around the footings that he'll be doing. I came out and had lunch at the site. It was Kidd Valley's 30th birthday so I bought $0.95 cheeseburgers for the whole work crew. Nothing like watching your house being built while you picnic on the plastic covered dirt pile. Carlee, Garrett, Parker & Cody came out and visited the site as well. Garrett doesn't quite understand why this is our house, but we aren't there all the time. I think once the lumber starts to be put up, he'll start to understand a little more. Parker doesn't care yet, he's cute and he has shoes. Check out Carlee's blog: http://stampincarlee.blogspot.com/ |
| The other really good news is that the basement level has more than doubled in size. The entire basement area will be useable, the original basement area will be finished, and the other area will have a concrete floor, but no heating, etc, and it'll have the mechanical/ducting/support pillars stuff in it. It will all be for storage. The basement was originally about half the size of the main floor, but now it'll be the same size as the main floor. Since the site is sloped, we designed the house with the half basement to account for that. Another plus is since we're going to move the mechanical stuff into the storage area, the room that was going to be the mechanical room will now be the bathroom, so we won't have to give up any space in the finished area. |
| Pour is supposed to happen today. 12:20 it gets called off, some problem with the pumper truck. Grrrrrr. It's amazing how a single day delay compounds to several days or a week. We're behind schedule. We should've poured the walls on the 19th. Oh well. The good news is that the weather is really holding. Just a little longer, just a little longer..... |
| Mark meets with the city inspector at the site. Finds a few minor issues and the concrete guys fix them. We're on schedule to pour on Monday now. |
| We're having a problem with the foundation walls. They are too tall. The hole got dug so deep that the walls ended up being 10ft tall, instead of the 9ft that it should be. Mark has spent the last two days trying to get it straitened out. He's been talking with our consultant, the concrete guy and the city to get it all figured out and he did (he's so smart!). We ended up stepping down the walls to match the footings so that they are only 9ft tall. |
| The concrete guys were back at work Wednesday once Mark got it figured out. The walls could be poured on Friday (hopefully) or Monday. |
| Visit the site. About two-thirds of the forms for the foundation walls are done. Turns out our crawl space is going to be quite large, we decide that we fill pour a thin slab in there for additional storage. We could've made the basement much larger, but we didn't know when we were designing the house. We thought we had to account for the slope, but it turns out that it wasn't that much of a problem. Oh well. The house is big enough as it is. |
| Mark has also designed in a 4th bathroom downstairs to go with the guest suite (FKA Media room). It'll just have sink/toilet and there will be a closet for the guest room. We're probably also going to add a window for the guest suite, so it will be a true 4 Bed/4 Bath house, rather than the 3/3 it is now. |
| Concrete is poured for the footings. There is a big pumper truck on site to get the concrete down to the site. The concrete trucks have to back down the road to transfer the concrete to the pumper, but the angle of the road is so steep that some of the concrete spills out of the open end of the truck. Mark cleans it up immediately. We don't want to leave any concrete blobs on the road. =] |
| Forms for the footings are done! |
| Mark meets the excavator at the land, they fix the problem. Concrete guys should be back tomorrow to set the footings. |
| Mark & Jean meet the plumber out at the land. Review the plans, discuss the different issues; tankless water heater, will there be enough water pressure for the shower with the WaterHaven unit, what size of pipe will be used, should we rough-in for a future bathroom in the basement, plumb a sink in the outdoor kitchen? |
| On Friday, the concrete guys said they couldn't figure out the re-staked house. We go out and measure and the stakes are right on. However, one of the 'steps' of the excavation is not in the right place. More dirt needs to be removed. Gotta call the excavator . . . . |
| The city paved the road around the Nobel plot and the cul-de-sac up into the plot. It looks great! This also means that the garbage truck has a place to turnaround, so people don't have to haul their garbage all the way up the road to the place where the truck can turn around. Yeah!!!! |