a productive day

We got a lot accomplished today. 
The foundation and weatherproofing were inspected and passed by the Coventry building inspector. 

Finished installing the insulation on the inside crawlspace. 

Ordered Insul-Tarp for insulating under the slab.  Insul-Tarp is said to be very easy to install, has almost the same insulating properties as the rigid foam (see two posts down) and also acts as a vapor barrier. I need to install a vapor barrier anyways, so some savings there.  All-in-all, I will be spending about one hundred dollars more for the tarp, but saving hours and hours of work.

Finished applying for the CT solar energy leasing program which just reopened Friday.  The program is only accepting 100 applications, so I hope that I got in on time. This program is the ONLY way that we will be able to afford solar panels at this time, unless I win the lottery, so we are crossing our fingers.

Tomorrow Dan the excavator will start to fill around the foundation.

Thanks for reading.

foundation pictures

In the first few pictures you can see the foundation- fully formed and curing.  This first picture is from the back western side of the house facing towards the front. The "box" in the back is going to be filled and a slab put on top.  The front box will be a crawl space.

In the picture below you can see a couple of things: First you can clearly see the two "boxes" the one on the right is the crawlspace, the one on the left will be the slab area.  Secondly, you can see the black weatherproofing that is going around the exterior of the crawlspace.  You can "dampproof" but due to the high water table in our area, we went with waterproofing instead.

In the pictures above and below you can see the second part of the foundation preparation, the insulation.  We are using 2inch rigid foam board with an R rating of 10.  I am going to use the excess board to line the outer perimeter of the slab box to increase insulation.

The next step is to loosely back fill the outside part of the foundation, then fill in the garage and slab box, compact and grade.

Thanks for reading. 

foundations and slabs

Now that we have pretty much gotten through the whole site clean-up process, we can finally start looking to the rest of the build process.  We spent way more than what we were expecting to clean the site up, but hopefully we will be able to stay closer to budget from this point forward.  Anyways-  as the foundation is being poured this week, my thoughts are moving towards insulation and waterproofing.

The house is a hybrid.  It has both a crawlspace as well as a slab.  That means insulating the house needs to be slightly different also.  I plan on using 2 inch thick extruded polystyrene boards.  Around the interior perimeter of the house I am going to line the foundation walls with it using liquid nails to hold it in place. Under the slab I am going to lay a 6mil polyethylene vapor barrier over the stone lay the insulation on top, and then the concrete right on top of that.   In the picture below, I plan on using the option to the far right.

Thanks for reading

We have a foundation!

more pictures of this crazy pre-existing foundation

These pictures were taken during the day by Dan or his assistant, Sean. At one point they found a four by four by four foot cube of concrete.

site pictures

The pile of concrete is the last of many loads leaving the site.  Im not sure that I can convey how much STUFF came out of the ground here.  In the third picture is an example of the garbage dug up.  Dan, our excavator, estimates several tons of junk pulled out of the ground, that does not include the concrete.  The concrete alone is probably 60+ tons.  We can not understand the thickness of this foundation.  We are talking 2-3 times the normal thickness AND it was reinforced by rebar.  Wow.

good news just keeps on happening :(

We finally have started to dig the foundation YEA!  But of course things don't go as smoothly as we would have liked.  Our excavator found the OTHER foundation  (from the second building lot) and again it's not normal foundation.  Instead of the typical 6 inch walls, we have found 18 to 24 inch walls reinforced by rebar.  Again we need to rent a jackhammer to get it out.  Cha-Ching!  To add insult to injury, whomever buried the old foundation, left whatever junk was there.  We are finding remnants of old stove pipes, tires, water hoses, you name it, we are finding it.  Because the soil that is being excavated is not "undisturbed" Dan is going to have to go back and pack and compact it.

This last week, week and a half has been very demoralizing to me.  Due to all of these hidden issues in our dirt, we are seriously over budget.  Tim, our GC, keeps trying to keep our spirits up, telling us that we will be able to make up savings elsewhere. I hope so.  I would hate to run out of money before the house is finished.  Whew.

This was a garage floor?

Building a house is a slow process.

So, in the last week, we have an extended well (305 feet), a demolished garage, and the last tree is down.
Still to do before digging the foundation is ripping up the garage slab and putting a tie in to the sewer system.  Both of these are of some concern.  A garage slab is normally 2-4 inches thick, with maybe chicken wire in it to stabilize it.  Our garage is 6+ inches and has rebar.  Slightly overkill.  This means that Dan, our excavator needs to hammer it out, instead of just lifting it out and having it break.  Ugg.

Secondly, we are hearing a bunch of horror stories about the sewer.  The company that put the sewer in put it in fairly deep, and put gravel backfill not only on the main lines, but on the tie-ins also.  This, combined with the very high water table near the lake has created a varitable underground river, which fills up any holes dug at the sewer lines.  We are all worried about it, but hopeful that the recent heat wave has slowed the river somewhat.  We are crossing our fingers.


Thanks for reading!