Our house REALLY is green.

Much has happened since the last blog.  The project is moving faster than I can keep up with the blog.  The wood forms were removed from the basement walls about a week ago.  This occurred only one day after the concrete pour to allow the walls to cure more fully.  The wood you see in the picture below (in the center of the house) are the removed forms.  Amazingly, the walls stayed up!  It's surprising how fast concrete hardens.  My sister and I used to make figurines out of plaster of paris in a process similar to the pouring of these walls.  The molds we used would heat up quite a lot, then once cool we could remove the mold, paint and admire our creations.  Obviously, we didn't have computers, Nintendo or even color TV.  Plus we walked back and forth to school for 5 miles, uphill both ways.

The foundation walls after the wooden forms have been removed.

The green lines sprayed on the outside came next and are meant to mark the extent to which waterproofing will be applied.  Unfortunately, at this point we had the huge wind/rain storm over the weekend resulting in some small amount of collapsing of the dirt walls around the basement.  Sadly this collapse was too small to bring in equipment and it was up to the brave and strong Scott, part of Jason's crew, to hand dig the soil away from the foundation to allow the waterproofing to be applied.  

With this delay we are now working fast to beat the next wave of storms.  In another amazing display of construction scheduling, Jason was able to get the waterproofers in to do their job yesterday.  Here are the results:

The foundation walls after being waterproofed.

Astute observers will note that our house is literally green!  We didn't use the traditional asphalt/tar waterproofing and instead went with a product called Rub-R-Wall.  This membrane is asphalt-free and according to testing standards is non-toxic, non-carcinogenic and will not contaminate groundwater.  It's also rated to last 100 years.  Here's a website in case you're interested in this product:  Rub-R-Wall site

The next step, happening today, as I type, is to put gravel over the drainage system that was also installed yesterday (which included the code-mandated sump pump).  Then this gravel is covered with some of the backfill soil.  Most of the walls are left exposed to allow for more curing of the concrete.  Eventually the hole around the house will be backfilled completely and the green coating will be covered up.  Then the only evidence that we have a green house will be the non-existent utility bills!

Onward and upward,
Mark, Mark and Isabel