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

A Solid Foundation

We all desire to have a solid foundation in life.  Well, we now actually do have one, or at least the beginnings of one.  The startling thing is how fast this phase of the project is going.  It's only been 5 days since the hole was dug, two of which were the weekend, and already the wall forms are going up.  Jason, the builder, says that we need to move quickly on this part to avoid having the sides of the hole cave in during a rainstorm.  "Quickly" to us seems like light speed, especially when you remember that it took many times longer to get the paperwork approvals.  Shoot, it takes us longer to get the laundry folded.

Anyway, it's great fun to see such dramatic progress.  Poor Jason must be losing sleep trying to figure out how to diplomatically tell us that the rest of the project won't go quite as quickly or dramatically.  It doesn't help him to see us standing out front with packing boxes and furniture waiting to move in!

We did a lot of research on the best foundation for our house.  At one point we were considering a panelized wall system which gets made off-site and trucked here as wall sections.  The way that system gets installed has the wall sections resting on a bed of gravel, with no footings.  Footings are important to overall stability and durability of the house.  We felt that even though the panelized system is touted as being green, a foundation based on footings is also green because of its longevity and stability.  Here's a link to read about foundation footings and the forces they must contend with to keep your house up:
http://www.askthebuilder.com/B10_house_foundations_footings.shtml


Now the pictures:

The forms and the metal rebar are in place, next step is to pour the footings.  The 3 grids in the center are poured thicker and become the places where steel support columns are put.

Close-up view of the forms and rebar waiting to be filled with concrete to create the footings.

Here the concrete is poured to and we have our footings.  The groove in the concrete will fill with more concrete when the walls are poured, this will add lateral stability (as will the additional rebar seen in this picture).  The blue chalk lines show the thickness of the walls.

This is the beautiful site we awoke to this morning.  WALLS!  The wood forms are placed on the blue chalk lines shown in the picture above and concrete will be poured in between the wooden forms.  These walls will be the foundation (and basement) of the house.  

It looks like we will have basement walls by the weekend if the weather holds out.  Not quite sure how they do the windows and doors, but we'll let you know when we do.

Onward and upward,

Mark, Mark and Isabel

Our Hole New House

I do actually remember trying to dig a hole to China when I was a child.  At the time I didn't know it would be an 8,000 mile trip through molten lava.  A couple of years ago we actually did go to China, although in an airplane this time.  Which if you think about it too long, is just as weird as digging your way there with a shovel.  As an adult digging is my least favorite gardening activity.  Mostly because it's awful hard to do.  But after our builder Jason called to say excavation would start on Thursday morning, I felt like a kid on his way to China.  I was very excited, distracted from Wednesday's activities and ready to hop out of bed at 5:30 a.m. to be ready in time for the big machines.

So, in short, we have a hole!  It's nowhere near China, but it cost more than two tickets for the tour we took.  We consider it to be well worth the money since the idea is to fill our beautiful new hole with our beautiful new house.

The old foundation from a previous house that was taken down decades ago.  The stone from this foundation was separated from the soil and will be sold to a quarry for eventual use as somebody's garden wall.  In fact we carried a bunch off to the side for our "can't get here soon enough" garden.

Vinnie, the highlift bulldozer driver was a true artist.  And after less than 2 days, here's what we have:

We are standing in the basement (we have to have 9 foot basement ceilings in this part of the city!).  One floor up from where we're standing would be the hallway between the kitchen and living room.

Something you might not know about Isabel (she's the black one above).  She loves freshly dug soil, so probably she was the most excited about this phase of the project.  Incidentally, the round, rusted object in the upper left corner is an old water heater if you're interested.  We also found car parts, though no whole car yet, and also more clothing and the soles of shoes?!?

Onward and upward,

Mark, Mark and Isabel