The Video:
My time-lapse camera is pretty basic and has a manual focus. I had it set to 8ft instead of ∞. Easy mistake ;^). But here is the slightly out of focus video anyway.
The Story:
I was not able to be on site when the crew setup the formwork and rebar for the garage slab. When I did see it, I realized it would need to be redone. Engineering had been done by 2 different engineers… The first was the engineer that I had hired to do the entire project. He specified rebar every 24 inches across the slab. The engineer from SteelMaster specified 6×6 WWR (welded wire reinforcement). I decided to do both. The guys who assembled the footings were only looking at one of the drawings, so they just put down the WWR. In addition to adding rebar, I wanted to add a vapor barrier, rigid insulation and radiant floor pex also…
First, I waited for the plumbers to come and do their work roughing in the garage bathroom. While they were working, I removed the large sheets of welded wire reinforcing and bent 40 peices of repar to put into place. After the plumbers were done their work, I tried laying it all out myself. However, I soon realized that positioning 16×8 ft sheets of welded wire is really a two man job. I decided to phone a friend. Aaron was willing to give me a hand early Saturday morning.
We started by excavating away a couple inches of sand in the areas where we planned to place the rigid insulation. At nearly 27$ per sheet, I didn’t want to insulate the whole slab, but I did want warmer feet in the bathroom and workshop areas.
We cut and laid the insulation carefully around the plumbing for the bathroom. And then in an “L” shape where my workbench would be…
Then we unrolled a 20ft wide sheet of 6mil poly to use as a vapor barrier under the slab and under the footing all the way around. Here, we are lifting the rebar in the footing to get the plastic underneath it.
The poly sheet was 20’ wide, so we had to do this in two overlapping pieces… Which Aaron taped together.
Initially, we had rebar chairs down the middle, but they were too tall so we had to remove them later.
I measured out and marked the 24 inch intervals for the rebar using surveyors paint.
Then we laid the rebar, using small bits of insulation as spacers. We put the 6×6 WWR on top of that.
Lastly, I brought out some pex pipe for future radiant floor heating… The pex was much longer than I needed for the bathroom, so I made a last minute decision to swing a loop out past my workbench… I secured it to the Welded Wire Reinforcement ever few feet.
The last thing that needed fixing was the wooden board that had been put in place as a keyway for the quonset hut. It had been installed too shallow and had been put in the wrong place (even though I had clearly marked where it should go). We decided to let the experts fix that mistake on the day of the pour.
The Mistakes
- Perhaps I should have excavated a bit more before placing the rigid insulation. It seemed OK at the time, but after adding spacers, rebar, WWR and radiant tubing, I wished I had it an inch deeper.
- I may regret adding the pex loop thru the shop… It may end up making it difficult for me to heat that bathroom adequately without also wasting heat in the shop.
- I only tied off the pex every few feet. But later, when we added the concrete, many sections floated to the surface. The crew pushed it back down again, but then later they didn’t want to cross cut the back half of the shop. Of course, cracks formed along where the PEX tube was too close to the surface.
The Video
You can find the video here:
The Story
The day started early, with the site mostly staked from the previous day (that video was not very interesting, so I won’t bother posting it)…
But we still needed to place a few more stakes, so as the morning fog cleared, Sherri and I finished what we had started.
We were in a rush, so our precision was not the best, but the footings are 2 ft wide and the wall is only 6 inches wide, so we just wanted to get things within an inch or so (further fudging happened when the forms were actually placed, I hope it all works out)…
The guys from Dysert Concrete arrived and started working on forming the garage while we finished up the stakes on the south side of the house.
The garage perimeter required about 200 linear feet of boards. The plan is to pour the garage footing and floor at once (sometimes called a thickened edge slab). The perimeter is 2 ft thick and 18 inches deep (shallow frost protected footings), but the middle is only a 4 inch thick slab. So we would need to dig trenches around the perimeter and then also backfill and tamp down the middle.
The rest of the house looks curvy, but actually it only needed 350 ft of curved boards and 400 ft of straight boards. They used 2x12s for the straight boards and the flexible ones are half inch thick lap siding. Actually, it seems like modern builders only use lap siding for curved forms, never for actual siding. The bedroom side of the house is mostly straight boards, with curves on the end and back (against the earth).
People assume the curves add to the cost, but actually, the lap siding costs much less than the 2x12s and the curved walls resist the earth loads better, allowing me to use 1/3rd the thickness and less reinforcement.
These are just the footings. Basically, the walls will sit on them and it will help to distribute the loads so the house doesn’t sink into the sand. They will end up one foot below the floor and will never be seen in the final house, so the exact angles and curves don’t really matter that much. So, when the inside radius of the bedroom apse was just too tight to curve the lap siding board without breaking it, we just went with piecewise linear…
As they started leveling the tops of the footings, it became clear that we would need bring up the ground level a little, especially on the bedroom wing side of the house… I used my skidsteer to dump some sand near the right places.
The next day, they continued with leveling the forms and moving sand around to meet it. I actually needed to get a bit more sand for them. They use a builders level to set the boards to the right height and then screw them to the stakes. After the boards are screwed to the outside stakes, they can remove the inside ones. Then they push sand up against the outside of the forms to help resist the lateral force of the concrete. It worked in most areas, but it later became clear that they should have used more stakes in some areas to prevent the concrete from moving the boards.
After leveling, they ran the tamper thru the area to pack it all down so it won’t settle later… Then they set the rebar chairs (that will keep the rebar out of the dirt). At this point, we had an issue because they had brought 6 inch rebar chairs because they assumed I would want the rebar in the middle of the footing. But since most of the tension would be in bottom of the footing, I needed them to push those chairs half way into the ground.
Eventually, they cut, curved and placed about 2000 ft of rebar. Actually, I had ordered much more rebar than I needed because I figured I would use it eventually. I was very happy to be able to use my SkidSteer to unload the two large bundles from the top of the truck. I am sure Doug’s guys were also happy that they didn’t have to unload it.
The Mistakes…
As per usual, I am sure I made a number of mistakes. Many will become known as I move ahead with the project, but I know of at least a couple already.
- I was busy working that day. I was short on vacation days and only took half the first day off and none of the second day. This means I couldn’t guide the crew. Instead, they relied on my stakes. I had placed the stakes fairly carefully, hopefully within an inch or so of where they should end up, but the guys simply measured off the stakes and cut boards without concern about matching lengths or square angles. If I had walked with them, I could have said “this board is 6’9” long and so is the one opposite…” It would have resulted in a more accurate footing… On the other hand, the footing will be buried and doesn’t need to be perfect to distribute the load adequately. There was actually a 3rd day, but I couldn’t make it out to the property at all that day and they really didn’t understand what was needed for the garage footing, to the point that we had to redo it (fortunately, I did not have to pay by the hour).
- My plans were changed by an outside force and I didn’t properly adjust my 3D model or work thru all the ramifications. The change started when the basement was dug and we excavated a wider area than I expected. This caused the inspector to require that I added those pilasters to help support the footings that spanned the backfill. We also made a change so that the garage floor and footings were poured at once, and therefore the top of the garage footing was the same level as the final floor. And since I needed the footing to sit on top of the basement wall, I put the mud room footings at the higher level all the way across from the garage to where they sit on the pilasters. I thought about how this would affect the concrete rib that will sit on that footing (I will need it to be a foot shorter than the others.) but forgot that it would also affect how the floor is poured and would also complicate how I insulate that footing. Oh well, I will deal with that when I get to that point.
The Video
This is probably the shortest video I have made so far. I didn’t need to be on site for most of this work, and only caught a bit of it on video.
The Story
After digging the trench and placing the septic tanks, we had some delay while the health department decided how we had to deal with our unofficial garbage dump and steep sandy terrain. Basically, the Roe Brothers dealt with most of that, so I didn’t catch all the details. It seems like there was a switch of health inspectors to deal with and the second guy didn’t like the way we implemented the first guys plan (or something like that). There may also have been an additional inspection, but we were already way over budget, so the Roe brothers ate the cost of that one (several hundred dollars per inspection).
We were also waiting for gravel to be delivered. My soft sand and large gravel order meant that only a certain kind of truck could manage the delivery without getting stuck. Only a few gravel yards in the area had the right kind of truck and all were broken down or otherwise indisposed. There was also a power outage in the area (due to a crazy storm) that prevented some of the gravel yards from loading up their trucks, so orders were backing up.
But eventually, after weeks of delay, 60 yards of gravel arrived and the Roe Brothers were able to finish the septic system.
Basically, the effluent will flow out of the 2nd septic tank and into a PVC Manifold that separates it into 7 parallel pipes… These pipes have little holes that will let it leech out, basically spreading it wide enough for nature to absorb it by natural processes. On the other end, the 7 pipes are reconnected by a manifold (for some reason)…
Later, the pipes and gravel were all covered over by dirt, which Dick Roe had to sculpt for proper surface flow around the septic field. That area should end up pretty fertile.
The 70 year old garbage dump magically disappeared, presumably its “antiques” (mostly old bottles) were reburied near by, but I forgot to ask where.
Then Sherri (with a little help from the boys) seeded tens of thousands of square feet with a rye/blue grass mixture and raked it all under.
In the end, we went about 8% over budget on the septic field. I also had not properly factored in all the costs associated with back-filling the long trench and around the house, which added a couple thousand dollars extra and put us about 30% over budget on the total septic system.
Next: we get going on the main floor footings.
