Basement Framing and Subfloor

Now that all the walls in the basement are framed, the next step is installing the floor joists and subfloor.  We have some large spans of open space (20'+) and I didn't want any poles in basement so had to beef up the TGIs.

The middle section will be where the pool table, dart board, etc goes.  Against the far wall will be TV and game consoles, plan to unpack the oldies:  Atari 2600 (original), SNES, Sega Genesis, Nintendo 64, Nintendo GameCube, PlS2, Wii, PS3

From this direction, you can see C office on the right and spare bedroom in the corner.  There is a bathroom in the far left corner.

The floor joists started laying out pretty quickly but the supplier failed to ship (11) 16' and sent (8) 8' instead of (8) 9' so weren't able to finish.  Took an extra day to get materials out there.

I upgraded the subfloor to the Edge Gold (something like $35/sheet) but is guaranteed not to delam or warp for 200 days.  Hopefully I wont have to test that claim out.

I just finished helping load up about 30 sheets of the subfloor (HEAVY) and the framer/truss guy are going over the details of the layout.  Lots of small details to make sure everything is correct before building the trusses.  It is a pretty complicated layout and definitely an expensive line item

He said it will take about two weeks to build the truss and no reason why framing the upstairs can't be done in that amount of time.  We'll see.

Basement Framing

The framing started the next week and the plates and the back wall went up pretty quick.

Here's C enjoying the view from her future office.

Two days later they sheeted the exterior and braced the walls.  First rain but the wood really didn't get wet too bad.  I changed to Doug Fir instead of Hemlock Fir (more costly) as it is the best structural lumber by far.

Meanwhile, I have so much backfilling to do that it will probably take me a couple months before everything is done.  As I finish off sections of the waterproofing, I will try and move dirt but the biggest areas are the front of the house and the garage.

I have to raise up the the garage floor about 3' and for a 1300 sq ft area, that is a lot of material..  

Plus the front of the house is excavated out about 15' away from foundation where the pier pads were poured.  Once I pour the sonotubes, that will be about 50+ yds of dirt to fill in.

At least we are starting to see the house take shape now.  

Basement Slab

Called for the rough in inspection so we could pour the slab.  I called the inspector the morning of (not the most personable guy) to see what time he would be coming as I wanted to make sure I was onsite in case I needed to do any quick modifications to prevent a failed inspection.  Luckily he was sending another guy who turned out to be super nice.  He gave me a 90min window and even told me one of the common reasons for failure - not wrapping the pipes with some type of barrier when they go through concrete (note - not in the code).  Thank goodness he told me and I ran out to get some insulation and wrapped around the drain pipes sticking up.

He showed up, inspected the gravel/vapor barrier and then went over to check the water level.  The 3" drain had 10' head and was topped off.  Everything passed and the pipes were holding water.

Slab pour was scheduled next morning at 6am and was expected to be beautiful weather.

Ended up having the same pump truck guy and we worked out a deal for payment that saved me a couple hundred - always good.  After 30 yards of mud, the guys worked for about 4-5 more hours doing the power trowel and edging.  Sure does look purty

The grading for the crawlspace is sloped nice but need to trim the Delta Drain.  I know this is overkill to put tar on walls and the Delta inside the crawlspace but I'm paranoid about water inside the basement.  $1000 is peace of mind.

Prep for Basement Slab

After we finished the rough in plumbing, had to get 4" pea gravel set, vapor barrier laid down, and rebar set.  I estimated that I needed about 30 yds of pea gravel (didn't use crusher run because pea is self compacting) but the quarry only sold by tons about the equivalent was roughly 32-35tons of gravel.  So, order up a full load that was 32.68 tons .... that was way short so ended up having to order another full load and had about 4-5 yds left over.  What I didn't think about was that the gravel was wet so I was paying for water weight but was way short on material (lesson learned).

John was bringing the gravel via backhoe and dumping inside the walls, then I would use the Dingo to move and spread around the basement area.  This took about 3 days to complete and one day a neighbor, Mike, who is also building down the street stopped by with his backhoe and helped out as well.

 After getting it spread 4" thick, we spread out the 6mil vapor barrier (aka plastic sheet) and overlapped the joints 12".  I had wanted to tape the seams (best practice) but it rained so wasn't able to.

 Finally after many hours of prep work, finished off the the area with all rebar tied in an 8'x8' grid.  Big thanks to John for helping out to get this done (Note - this will become a common theme :-)  Next stop, basement floors.

We have Concrete Walls

Woke up Saturday to another beautiful day.  It took all day to strip and clean up but the walls are looking nice.  Hard to imagine six months ago that this entire area was covered in trees and underbrush waist high.

View looking southwest toward the garage.  

We started out Sat morning with working on the rough in plumbing and I kinda left that to John (aka the plumber).

You will see a huge L-shaped wall in the back corner of the garage - that wall is 9' tall and about 24' long.  There is also a huge pit in front that has to be back filled that is at least 20 yds, ugh .... although I'm not supposed to backfill for at least 3 weeks to let that beast fully cure.

Nice view across the entire foundation

I started backfilling on Sunday around the stem wall as it was solid and not putting alot of pressure with 16" of material.  The foundation guy said I could make a ramp and drive over with the Dingo but I didn't want to chance placing 2000lbs over the newly formed wall.  So, I slung the dingo over the wall.  I was still a little nervous going over the top of the wall in case something broke but it worked out awesome.  

I would drop in several buckets of material and then use the Dingo to go back and forth to pack down - did this twice for the 16" rise.  The pink stuff - 2" XPS around the perimeter where the the slab goes.  This is only for the areas where the concrete isn't covered by 18" of dirt on the outside.

The rough in for the plumbing was finished although I still need  put two buck outs around the two end pipes for the toilet and shower drain.  This way, we don't have to be exact on the placement and can put right where we want it later .... and just patch around the pipe with concrete.  There will be floor covering it anyway so you will never see the patchwork.  Much easier this way.

Setting Foundation Walls

After the footings were poured, started right away with setting the forms for the walls.  It took a bit longer than expected because the foundation guy was juggling a couple things but we were only a couple days behind original plan.

All walls set except for the beast wall in the corner.

Passed inspection with three items to be rechecked at a later date but we were able to continue with the pour the following day.  Pump truck arrived and set up as close to the perimeter as he could.  The hose just barely reached the opposite corner at the far end of the house.

Just one of the many trucks that were constantly rolling in and out for a couple hours.

Mark working the hose and Justin working the trowel.

Got Power

Got the call from the electric company that they would be turning on the power sometime today but couldn't give me a timeframe.  I had dumped 10yd of sand by the temp pole pit but had to take some by the transformer pit so I got there early to move about 4yd.

The power company showed up first thing and got right to work.

The three lines were big and filled up the 3" pipe.  They attached the cables to the 250' rope I had to leave inside the conduit and the guy on the other end started to pull.

Even though there was only one slight bend, about 22 degrees, he was still pulling hard to get that wire through the conduit.  I jumped in and helped him pull for about the last 100' so that was pretty cool.  I wanted to get some pictures of them actually connecting up the wires but the lumber salesman showed up to go over the upcoming first load.  By the time I finished up, they were already done and packing up.

I then filled in both pits with sand and checked the meter .... it shows all 0000s.  Pretty sweet.

We now have power and don't have to worry about taking generators back and forth.