...and more block...

This is hard slow work, especially for the unschooled. At mid-July, we've got about 1/3 of the blocks in place. Our friends Jeb and Pat helped us a lot today (Saturday July 16). Pat's been filling in gravel for the French drain, and mixing mortar (1 part concrete to 3 parts yellow sand--adjust water accordingly, as wetter mortar sticks best to the sides of the block and drier mortar makes a good bed when adjusting to inconsistencies in the footer). Jeb and Julie and I laid block. Then we had a picnic.

Beer & wine optional.

Unlike the digging, the forming, and the scrambling around trying to spread wet concrete, this would seem easy. Just sitting on a block slapping mortar on other blocks. But there's the sun, the mixing, the lifting, and the occasional thrown trowel whenever blocks defy our efforts to get them staright and level. It adds up. We've begun to realize that this is going to take a while--so we took the next day off!

Concrete Block

On July 1 we began to realize that we probably wouldn't be able to get the house under roof by the time we go back to school in late August. Here we're getting the block delivered...

This was pretty slick. Each "block" has 90 cinderblocks, and the teeth on the crane grab the bottom layer--this saved us a "pallet charge", which is a deposit on the wooden skids often used to deliver this material.

This guy was good. He placed the blocks so that every area would have a supply, thus we wouldn't have to carry blocks too far to any given point. He also kept a stright line clear between each diagonal corner--so we could run level lines to check that each corner or "lead" was square and level with one another.

Over the weekend my friend Jeb and I ran a dry course for fit...

Here's a close-up of the mason's lines. We ran these to corner posts, which were easier to work with than batter boards (because of the tight space around the base of the foundation). These are set level 8" above the footer and checked with each other and across the corners...

Then Julie and I put up the leads, and this set the stage for filling in the remaining blocks...

 This lead is too big. It should just be a corner, but I miscalculated. Still, no harm done, and it was satisfying, even if it's not too pretty!

 Here you can see the 2 more of the leads as we're working to get the first courses mortared in place....

A Solid Footing (2)

So to minimize moisture and maximize "comfort" working in a 36" crawl space it was recommended that we have a solid concrete floor. Here are the stages, including moving 10-1/2 tons of 2b gravel from a pile to the floor of the crawl space..., because the truck couldn't get close enough to dump it inside.

That's our friend Pat and my nephew Rich, hard at work. (They're smiling because we're almost done.) And here, probably the best this thing has looked since we started...

Then onto the vapor barrier. This was a 6 mil thick plastic anchored to the edges and joined at the seams with "Gorilla Tape"...

You can see the access for the well water intake in the foreground.
And finally, the concrete floor. Here we had the driver mix it up very wet, the easier to spread it around. It was at this stage that our amateur status really started to "shine"...

We had been worried that a forecast for early heavy rain would cause problems, and that we'd have to reschedule. But the rain held off. This is still "green" (not fully dried), and you can see the bridges of 2x12s we'd recovered from the forms. These are what we used to get into the middle and hand-finish the surface.

This photo is captioned "Not Great but Good"--the wrinkles and ridges shown here would remain. Eric had rented a tool called a bull float, which is a like a giant magnesium squegee that weighs about 15 lbs. and comes with a pole 15' long mounted to the head with a toothed locking swivel.

Unfortunately, this thing gets really heavy, and can actually stick to and get caught in the wet concrete (if you're not very good at this!)...and Eric broke the swivel. That meant we had to finish the floor by hand. The sun came out and it was HOT! We darn near got heat stroke, and didn't even manage to finish it all. But it's fairly level, and actually sufficiently smooth that it will work. Good thing very few people will ever see it once the house is up.

This is not as easy as it looks

We haven't posted much since mid-June, because we've really been hustling to get to the point where we have a solid deck for the structural insulated panels (SIPs), which we had hoped to have delivered and erected by now.

But this is a big project. Here's the 1st pour:

Honestly, the driver was awesome...look how close he got! He came in at each corner, and the chute managed to reach all the pads in the center, as well as the footer itself. This spared us trying to catch concrete in a wheelbarrow and trundling it over to pads that were farthest from the perimeter. We'd read about "slump" and "psi", but this was real, and the driver was good at guesstimating the "wetness" of the concrete that would allow us to spread it quickly while maintaining strength. 4000 psi was specified for the pads, and 3000 psi for the footer. But we worked out that we could save delivery charges, and get both trucks (12-1/2 cubic yards) with a 3500 psi mix, since we thickened the pads and footers by a couple of inches.

Here one of my nephews, Trevor, helps to move wet concrete in the footer form to level it off.

And here's a finished section along the east side of the house.

Here's the deal: concrete comes out much faster than you expect, and it hardens much faster than you're ready for!

We Passed!

The codes officer came out the next day and approved our forms and reinforcement. On to pouring concrete...

1st Inspection Prep

An update. We spent much of the last 3 days bailing out hundreds of gallons of water from the center pads, while the perimeter trench dries out after a weekend of heavy rains. This is probably the most discouraged I've been, and Julie had to bouy up my spirits as we got absolutely covered in mud, while we removed the plastic sheeting covering the footer trench--we guess it must have kept at least some of the water out, but not much.


We also finished the rebar, fixed up a few small areas, and just generally have tried to make it as pretty as possible for the codes inspector, who's coming tomorrow at 9.

We'll let you know how it goes!

(Originally posted 6/14/11. Occurred after "Rebar Adventure".)