Suspended Concrete Floor Forms Are Up!!!!

We went to the site today and things are really starting to look good. The crew was able to get the suspended concrete floor forms up yesterday, and it's really starting to look like our house now. You can see the forms from the top view in this picture I took standing on top of a dirt pile. They will come in and pour concrete over the forms early next week. You can see the supports at the top of the ICF walls to hold it so that it doesn't bow out when the concrete is poured.

Then you can see the view from under the floor forms. This is basically exactly what our basement interior will look like - except that all of the supports you see will be removed once the concrete cures. The basement will be one open space with no columns interrupting the space. You can see the opening for the stairway to the left. These interior pictures were taken from the outside of the basement egress window on the west end of the house.

Here is Kenny walking in front of where our shed will be. You can see we've laid forms for the concrete floor of the shed, and right behind that - just off our property - there is a young baseball team sitting in the shade. When I climbed to the top of the dirt pile to get these pics, several of the players were over on our side of the property peeing along our shed base! We had to go and let their coach know (again - since this is an ongoing problem) that this is a dangerous construction site that children shouldn't be playing on. The baseball kids are used to having free reign on our property since it's been vacant for over 25 years.

Our neighbor then told us that there have been people on the site with children during the week - letting them play on the back hoes and excavating equipment. Not cool. I'm glad we have insurance! I don't even let my own kids on that equipment - even for pictures. I can't wait until we are on-site more doing more of the work ourselves. At least one of us is there nearly every day, but not usually for long periods of time. Appartently the issues are in the evenings and on weekends, so hopefully when we get moved into our rental and the house is framed up, we'll be able to work there more on weekends and evenings.

We'll get some more pictures posted after they pour the concrete! We also close on the sale of our house in Florence on Friday, so we'll officially become Ohioans then. Until next time . . .

More fun pics . . .

The suspended concrete floor forms are shown here stored on site - the crew was supposed to be putting them up today, so we'll go there tomorrow to get more pictures. Kaden and Kaila had a great time playing in our HUGE piles of dirt. They are learning a lot and exploring their new surroundings - including all of the bugs, butterflies, etc. Thanks for reading and we'll try to get some new pictures up as soon as possible. Thanks!

ICF finished and suspended concrete flooring on deck

So we had some additional clearing to do, so here you can see Kenny and I each having our turn with the little back hoe that we rented. There's thick brush (honeysuckle) pretty much everywhere where there isn't dirt, so we had to clear a spot for our shed. We wanted to get the shed in so that we have some storage there - on location.

You can see here that the ICF is all formed up and ready to go. The rest of today the crew spent setting up reinforcement for the suspended concrete floor forms. We left earlier today before the floor forms were up, so we're going there tomorrow for more pictures that I'll post tomorrow night. You can see the basement window locations on the far side, and there's an egress window just out of the picture to the right. The crew hopes to pour conctrete on Tuesday depending on the weather. I'll post a few more above of the kids - they had a riot playing in the dirt, but we found a tick on the back of Kaden's neck. It came right off, but it freaked me out!!!

After use by a few fully-loaded concrete trucks, our driveway was in pretty bad shape. So yesterday Kenny, the kids, and I went to the site to work on it. Well actually Kenny worked while we watched and took pictures and video. We rented this small back hoe and "re-tooled" the gravel. Essentially, the concrete trucks left some pretty deep ruts in the gravel and all of the rock was piled in the center, so as you can see from these pics, Kenny just skimmed the high points of rock off the center and to the sides. It worked really well. We also moved some rock from the middle parts of the drive to the front entrance near the road, and back to the turn around area by the house

Kenny had fun - eventhough it rained. The kids were really good - they love playing in the front seat of the truck, although they almost locked me out once (now I take the keys with me!) After we finished at the site, we went to our rental house to clean and get ready to move in. We sold our house in Florence and are supposed to be out between the 18th and 23rd of June - like next week! We are pretty happy, the house was only on the market for about 2 weeks, and only about 11 days of that was really advertised. This week, we're working on finishing up the ICF forms and suspended concrete floor forms. We also need to decide on a lumber package too. So many things . . . Thanks for reading!

Sub-Slab insulation and a Basement Floor

Again, these pics load with a mind of their own, so this time they are in reverse order - oldest at the bottom.
Above you can see the finished basement floor that was poured today. The pic below shows the concrete beginning to be pumped in.
The two pics below shows the very important Insul-Tarp product laid out. This insulation provides a barrier below the basement slab and an R-Value of approximately R-10. You probably can't see from these pics, but another important detail is the spray-foam insulation that the contractor sprayed between the footing and the ICF form.


Before the Insul-Tarp was laid, we also had the site treated for pests - which is a requirement here.

Ready for inspection . . .

Here's the plumber getting everything ready for inspection. These pics are from yesterday (May 31st) and the inspection was scheduled for today, June 1st. Kenny is stopping by the site on his way home today to see if we passed the inspection.

Again, is it a house or a pool?

Above, you can see gravel is finished and two courses of the Insulated Concrete Foundation system is in place (now it really looks like a pool to me!). The bottom rows of ICF were placed so the plumbers can establish where the sub-slab plumbing needs to go. Below, you can see how the gravel was shot into the hole - pretty cool ay? (I'm not sure why these pics keep loading in the wrong order!) By the way, these are some nice pics and camera angles, Kenny. Good work!

Above, the plumber and his assistants place the sub-slab plumbing. The pic below shows the plumbing almost ready for inspection. The bottom pic should actually be at the top, since it's before the ICF forms were placed - as I said, I can't figure out how to get these to load in order. Oh well.