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Foundations Entries

Bare Feet on Concrete

Saturday, July 27th, 2013

We've just pulled into the driveway after a day of helping Jenna build her pigpen. As the wheels of our truck crunch up the stone driveway, we can hear our woods buzzing with summer crickets and evening birds. It's good to be home. Halfway up th...

Workshop Slab Concrete Pour: Part Two

Friday, July 26th, 2013

Immediately, I am brainstorming places we can use the extra concrete. Maybe we could pour another slab somewhere? Tara doesn't think we should make rash decisions that we'll be stuck with, but I'm able to convince her when I remember a spot along...

Workshop Slab Concrete Pour: Part One

Friday, July 26th, 2013

The day we've been preparing for is finally here. The workshop foundation is being poured! Our masons, Pete and Chris are the first to arrive, at 6:30AM. Next comes Rick, and then the concrete trucks, right on schedule at 7AM. Though we've only ju...

Ready to Pour

Thursday, July 25th, 2013

With concrete trucks due to arrive at 7AM tomorrow, we spent the day putting finishing touches on our workshop form. Somehow, the final details always seem to stretch on forever! The first job of the day was to snip all the ends off the zip ties ...

Workshop Radiant Heat Tubing

Wednesday, July 24th, 2013

Today, we finished putting radiant floor heat tubing in our workshop. Holy shitballs, we're nearly there! ...

If I Start Screaming, Don't Mind Me

Tuesday, July 23rd, 2013

Tyler wraps me in his mud-smeared arms, and I bury my face into his sweaty, grimy neck, whispering, "We can do this, right?" He's trying to keep it together as much as I am—we're both outwardly calm and inwardly teetering on the brink of total melt...

Workshop Rebar Installation

Thursday, July 18th, 2013

On this hot July day, we spent the entire morning and afternoon at our workshop site, laying reinforcing rod inside our concrete form. The plans called for a grid two feet on center over the entire slab, as well as additional reinforcements along ...

In-Floor Outlets

Monday, July 15th, 2013

Every morning, around 7AM, my brain starts yelling at me to get something "productive" done. I swear this nagging voice has carved a literal groove (or fifty) in my cerebrum over the years. Generally speaking, I acquiesce. I know that if I haven...

Raking Rocks

Thursday, July 11th, 2013

After finishing my indexing quota for the day, I headed "downstairs" to help Tyler rake the stone that was dumped in our workshop's concrete form yesterday. Using Peter's slab plans as a guide, we shaped the material into a flat mound with carefull...

French Drains and Fill

Wednesday, July 10th, 2013

Today, we received thirty tons of 3/4" stone: Rick scooped most of it into the concrete form for our workshop: After that, we made a french drain around the back wall: First, we put down a layer of stone: Then, a layer of st...

Our Cottage Foundation, Wing Insulation & Backfilling: Part Seven

Thursday, June 27th, 2013

Yesterday, we removed the form bracing and laid the wing insulation for our cottage's frost-protected foundation. Today, Rick brought his excavator up to the site and helped us back-fill over it. It was an easy job—the whole process took all of t...

Our Cottage Foundation, Finishing the Slab: Part Six

Tuesday, June 25th, 2013

After about an hour of chatting, Pete encourages us to put our hurricane straps in before the concrete is too dry. I'm surprised—I assumed it would take ages to reach that stage! Together, Tyler and I climb up the ridge to the house site, and sur...

Our Cottage Foundation, Part Five: Pouring Concrete

Tuesday, June 25th, 2013

At long last, the day has arrived—we're pouring the foundation for our cottage! Things kick off bright and early with Rick pulling in at 7AM. He's here to check on us before the cement truck, pump truck, and masons arrive. Right off, he spots th...

Our Cottage Foundation, Part Four: Radiant Heating Installation

Monday, June 24th, 2013

The final major detail in preparing our cottage foundation for concrete is to lay PEX tubing for a radiant heating system. We don't have immediate plans to use it, but at a cost of about $100, it seems foolish to leave such an efficient heating op...

Our Cottage Foundation, Part Three: Adding Reinforcements

Saturday, June 15th, 2013

In order to support point loads from our timber frame posts, the outside edge of our cottage's concrete foundation will be roughly 12" deep, while the central portion will slope up to 6". To create this shape, we filled most of the form with 3/4" ...

Our Cottage Foundation, Part Two: Moisture Barriers

Friday, June 14th, 2013

With our concrete form built, and its interior foam over 6mil plastic installed, we applied two additional moisture barriers. First up, we filled any gaps between our 4'x8' sheets of EPS insulation with minimally expanding foam. The kkkhschhhhh o...

Our Cottage Foundation, Part One: Concrete Forms & Insulation

Thursday, June 13th, 2013

Last month, after we cleared the building site for our cottage, we started work on our foundations. With some instruction from Rick, we built our first-ever concrete form: a wooden frame to contain the frost-protected slab for our house. After me...

A Mountain of Foam

Friday, May 24th, 2013

We received a small mountain of EPS foam for our shallow frost-protected slabs today, and getting it home was a bit of a fiasco. Our shipment was supposed to arrive on a box truck, but instead, it came on a seventy-foot-long semi. Tyler did his b...

Insulating Our Shallow Frost Protected Foundations

Thursday, May 23rd, 2013

Assuming everything goes to plan, we will be pouring two shallow frost-protected concrete slabs next month. One for our grindbygg workshop, and the other for a small timber frame cottage. We've chosen this style of foundation because our land is ...