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Posted to dmaceld by MacArthur in Nampa, ID
on 9/16/2008 8:32:07 PM
I've been just too busy the past four months to take time to update the journal and post photos. In fact, I haven't even taken a lot of photos the past four months!
I promise, I will get an update here before long. We are well into construction with interior framing complete, rough in electrical and plumbing complete, the roof on, and just today completing the spray foam insulation on the underside of the roof. Siding and drywall come along next week. My helper, Tom, and I will do the siding but I'm going to contract out the drywall.
Then comes the finish work!
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Posted to dmaceld by MacArthur in Nampa, ID
on 5/26/2008 9:46:22 PM
One thing I forgot to mention in the earlier post about the foundation walls. Expanded polystyrene shrinks! When we laid down the first course of blocks for the foundation wall we tied them all togther with zip ties. Naturally this pulled the blocks snug to each other. What happened then is the long wall that was supposed to be 46' long ended up being 45' 11" long, a full inch short of the drawing dimension. The 40' 1" long wall ended up at 40' even. In both cases I had to make an adjustment in some room sizes and interior wall locations to adjust for the 1" difference. As it turns out, the 22' and 28' walls ended up pretty close to target dimension. Go figure.
So, if you build with ICF blocks be aware that 12 times 4' may not equal 48'.
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Posted to dmaceld by MacArthur in Nampa, ID
on 5/26/2008 9:37:25 PM
Finally, on Friday May 23, we poured the concrete in the walls, only a week or two behind what I expected a month ago!! The pour went without a hitch, except for concrete quantity. I estimated we needed about 44 yds, so we ordered 46 to be on the safe side. As fate would have it, we were finished at 40 yds. Ouch! 6 yds ordered and delivered that had to go back to the plant. When I reviewed my calculations and refined them down to the inch of wall length minus exact door and window opening sizes, I still ended up with an estimate of 41.5 yds. All I can figure is there is a fair amount of air trapped in the concrete. A check of the areas below the windows and the corners and tees the next day revealed no voids so I'm confident the concrete is solid all around.
Once again we found ourselves under the gun time wise to get ready to pour on Friday. I wanted to do it Friday so that we could take advantage of the long weekend for it to cure before we return to work on Tuesday.
The oversize corner blocks created a problem in getting the top course of blocks in place, particularly on one wall that is 12' long. The two corners tipped in toward each other to the point that the distance between them was 1" less at the top than at the bottom. After forcefully moving the corners back with the alignment braces I got the difference down to 1/4" and was able to force fit the top course of blocks.
When I was checking the height of the walls all around to determine how much we would have to trim to bring them all level we found out the top of wall elevation midway between corners was such that all the pre-cut interior studs would have to be trimmed, or the wall plate made thicker. This was so the truss bottoms would match the outside walls and the tops of the interior walls. What to do? Based on some discusssion on GreenbuildingTalk.com I looked on the web for some metal angles to put on top of the wall. I decided we could set the metal level all around at the correct height and trowel the concrete to that level. After some searching I found that 2 1/2" steel studs exist and the tracks into which they are fastened is a channel 2 1/2" wide, the same as the form foam. We placed the channels all around the top of the wall leveling them with blocks in the top course cut to the exact height needed. Worked good, except they're proving to be a pain to remove now that the concrete has set up! I checked it out on Saturday.
A significant last minute change was the master bath glass block window opening. When we went to install ICFVL connectors in the wall as anchor points for future grab bars around the toilet we discovered a real interference with the window location. After thinking about it overnight I decided to bite the bullet and move the opening 2' to the right. Consumed about 3 hours on Thursday, and we were committed to pouring on Friday!
Photos
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| Typical view of alignment bracing system in place with scaffold planks. Sure is a good thing OSHA doesn't focus on small DIY projects! The scaffolding would never pass muster! |
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| The 2 1/2" channel installed on top of the forms. This is above the patio door. You can see the rebar system with stirrups, or hairpins, supporting a rebar just above the opening. |
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| View of the SW corner of the house after the pour. There were no leaks, blowouts, or deformed bucks in the openings. All our work getting ready kept disaster at bay. |
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| I attached a block to the top of the story pole for checking the top of wall elevation. I used a form block cut exactly in half with a short piece of channel on top to check the height. I then cut an ICF block the right height to support the channel at the desired elevation. I did this at the ends of the channel and used half size blocks, which were lesser height, in between. This way I could utilize one full form block in two pieces and still have a top of wall level and at the correct elevation. Nearly all of the walls were "bathtub" shaped, high at the corners and up to 1/2" lower midway. Full size forms cut exactly in half did not provide the height needed, so leftover pieces were cut to the right height and placed to support the channel ends and middle. |
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| Before the pour. This is the wall that in an earlier post I discuss how I straightened out the snake curve in the foundation wall portion. Looks good! Don't you agree? |
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| After the pour. The metal channels are turning out to be stuck pretty good between the concrete and foam and ain't comin' out easy! |
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| Garage doors before the bucks and lintel forms are in place. Notice the blue foam on the buck lying on the floor. That's sill seal that we put on the concrete side of all the bucks to keep the concrete away from contacting the wood. Not sure it's fool proof but considering our dry climate I decided it was good enough. |
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| Garage door after the pour. This is typical of how we did the bracing of the bucks. We put both vertical and horizontal braces about every 2' to 3'. There was no sagging or bowing of the bucks anywhere.
The two ICFVL connectors above the door are for the door spring center anchor and the anchor for the opener track. |
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| Master bath glass block window opening after moving it 2' to the right. The big OSB scab on the left (there's one on the outside also) is to cover the joint where I simply moved the blocks pieces I cut out from the right over to the left. I wasn't about to dismantle and restack the wall! It all held together during the pour. |
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| The bedroom south wall had a crook in it right above one of the windows and between two upright braces. We fixed up extra bracing to pull the wall in. That's two 2x6s on the inside with all threads going to a peice of LVL board on the outside. We cinched them down real tight and sucked the wall in pretty darn straight. Won't move ever again after the concrete has cured, that's for sure! |
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| Outside view of the brace above. |
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| One of two patches we needed to repair holes in the wall. This was about 4" wide by 10" high. That's a piece of 2x12 with an all thread going through the wall and a 2x4 on the inside. To keep from leaving the all thread in after the concrete cures I sleeved it with 1/2" poly tube. I'll pull it out in a day or two and fill the poly tube with foam. |
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| Another hole repair. This is piece of subflooring covering a 4" by 20" hole. I cut it deliberately to remove some excess canned foam I blew in the wall filling in some gaps between blocks. I guess I was trigger happy with the foam gun. |
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| Inside end of the patch above. The bedroom hole patch was basically the same. |
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| This was the high corner in the garage. I trimmed the inside of the form to the desired elevation and the concrete finisher leveled to it. I'll cut the outer side off before we put the sill plate down. |
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| This is the kitchen/garage wall. You can see how the outer side of the form goes from concrete level to about 1/2" above at the corner. This is in a distance of about 14'. How much of this was caused by the oversized corner blocks, and how much was caused by the footing concrete not being perfectly level, I do not know. Most of the rest of the garage wall was within 1/8" of the reference corner so I did very little trimming elsewhere, except for the other front corner which I trimmed about 1/4" for a couple of feet or so each way from the corner. |
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| Here's the 12' wall I had a struggle with. The corners tilted in toward each other to the tune of 1". This was definitely caused by the oversize corner blocks. By forcing the corners plumb I was able to get the requisite length of blocks in at the top. |
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| To check the straightness of the wall we used a string line up against the vertical alignment braces. In some cases we had to pull the wall back an excess amount and then push the brace against it to keep the brace snug against the form. |
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| Lesson learned! Silicone lube doesn't harm polystyrene, but the carrier it's in sure can! I gave Tom a new can of Liquid Wrench Silicone spray to lube the 3/4" conduit before pushing it down the corner holes in the the forms. We had used a different brand of spray silicone lube in the foundation wall with no problem, but that can was empty now. This time though, the spray lube dissolved the foam down about 8" to 12" before being rubbed off to a harmless level. Checking the can, I discovered there was a fair amount of petroleum distillate in the lube which is not good for foam! |
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Posted to dmaceld by MacArthur in Nampa, ID
on 5/11/2008 9:34:01 PM
April 29, 2008
Another milestone! We started stacking the walls.
As soon as we started on the wall stacking I realized we had a serious problem with the straightness of the front wall. See my earlier post about the crooked front wall. I just could not bring myself to continue the wall with that kind of 'snake' curve in the wall. What to do? I hit upon the idea of cutting a groove into the bottom of the first course of blocks that would allow me to shift the blocks side to side thus being able to get them into a straight line. It worked.
We made the first change to the plans as I have them drawn that affects the cosmetics of the house. When we installed the side bucks of the master bath glass block window and then laid the top buck on them we could readily see that it just didn't look right. I planned for the bottom of the window to be even with the bottom of the bedroom windows. But because the block window is only 40" high compared to 60" for the bedroom windows the tops were way out of line, too much to look good. We raised the window about 5" to bring it up to about the same elevation as the glass block window we had in our Louisiana house, which we liked the looks of. Now it looks much better.
One difficulty we've encountered is oversize corner blocks. After struggling to get some corners plumb, and trying to figure out why we were having gaps between courses near the corners, we finally discovered that the corner blocks we have are slightly oversize. This causes the corner to be about 1/2" higher than the straight wall after all 6 1/2 courses are laid.
For a complete review of the problem review my thread on GreenBuildingTalk.com.
http://www.greenbuildingtalk.com/Forums/tabid/53/forumid/4/postid/36038/view/topic/Default.aspx
In one corner of the garage when we plumbed the wall we ended up with a gap between the bottom course of blocks and the foundation course. I put canned foam in there to fill in the gap. We'll end up doing much the same thing in every corner. The top course of blocks will be trimmed as necessary to create a level top all around.
Photos
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| If you look close you can see how the front foundation wall is crooked. I didn't catch it before we poured the foundation wall even though I had taken this photo. |
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| Here's the groove I cut between the two rows of nubbins on the first course of wall blocks. |
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| Here we have a nearly 1/4" offset in the block alignment. The foundation wall was up to 1/4" out of alignment. I will have to do some fudging of the wall plane along the floor but rasping and spacers will take care of it. This area will be covered by baseboard inside and is at ground level outside so in the end it should not be noticeable.
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| This is on the other side of the doorway from the photo above. I had to shift the blocks here almost a 1/4" the opposite direction. |
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| Much straighter now! Sure makes me feel good how well this fix worked out. |
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| Master bath glass block window opening located per my drawing. It just didn't look right being that low. |
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| Master bath block window in higher position. Looks much better.
So far this is the only real cosmetic change from what I have on the drawings. |
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| Two full courses of wall block are in. At this point we installed the bucks for the window sills. |
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| We used 2 x 6s for the window bucks placed inside the form. Because the 2x6 is only 5 1/2" wide and the form space is 6" we need to fill in the gap. I started out using 1/2" Styrofoam but it proved to be more trouble than it's worth to stuff it in the crack. |
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| Here's the gap filled in with canned foam. Lot easier to use and is surprisingly stiff once it's set up. The bucks are fastened with 4" screws and plastic washers spaced 8" apart on both sides. After the concrete has cured the screws on the outside will be removed and used to screw through the flanges of the windows. |
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| We are using Doug Fir for all the bucks. Because this is close to the ground you aren't allowed to have untreated wood in contact with concrete. We have blue sill foam on the back side of the 2x12 to protect it from the concrete in the form. Here you see a 1 1/2" square strip of pressure treat on the bottom of the DF. The OSB is a temporary support flange until the pour is done. |
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| I hate the looks of electrical service conduit on the surface of the wall. The best place for the meter worked out to be right here on the garage wall that is visible from the front. The meter base is flange mounted. I have the conduit inside the ICF with its front surface flush with the foam. Canned foam fills in the gaps. This will be covered by OSB for strength during the concrete pour. |
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| This is where the walls are today, Sunday, May 11, 2008. |
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| Sometimes even the most mundane of material goods will yield a bit of art. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to make a little art out of this project! |
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Posted to dmaceld by MacArthur in Nampa, ID
on 5/11/2008 9:32:46 PM
April 24, 2008
The subflooring installation was pretty much straight forward. I used Advantech 3/4" flooring. According to tile guys on John Bridge tile forums Advantech is the best there is. It's priced between OSB and plywood and better and stiffer than either. It also will withstand normal weathering for up to six months without edge swelling.
We did have one problem. On the bedroom wing we started in the bathroom corner with a full sheet. The next sheet was short because it came to the shower. Beyond the shower we should have used a half sheet and that's what I had on my layout sketch. But we laid down a full sheet. Subsequently the next row of sheets ended up with ends lining up with the first row. We had to use some 32" inch long pieces in order to assure staggered joints. Oh well, I guess it's a lot to expect that everything works out according to plan.
Lesson learned:
Pay attention to the plans!
Photos
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| Subflooring partially completed. |
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| We covered the floor with tar paper to help keep it clean. |
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| Sunlight art. The stripes of sunlight on the crawl space floor caught my attention and I thought they looked a little bit 'artsy' so I took this shot! |
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Posted to dmaceld by MacArthur in Nampa, ID
on 5/11/2008 9:31:52 PM
April 9, 2008
Now we move on to the garage slab and the door thresholds. I want to get the garage into usable condition as soon as possible so we can quit renting the container and toilet. I'm putting a toilet in the corner of the garage. Doesn't cost much and will be convenient. Because some of the plumbing was going to be buried under the garage slab I had to set about getting it done. I'm doing my own plumbing so doing it piecemeal and fitting it in as work progresses makes sense. The only thing the plumbing inspector called me on during a quick visit to check on progress was my failure to use a double clamp were my water supply line was spliced into a stub out from the water meter. I wasn't quite ready for him to inspect the drain lines but he took a quick look at them. The next day when he returned for the inspection he already had the tag filled in and signed and in his pocket! He verified the existence of the double clamps and no water leaking from the drain plumbing and stuck the sticker on the sewer cleanout!
My approach to the inspectors has been to talk to them well ahead of time, let them review what I'm planning on doing, and ask questions. I then call and let them know where I'm at and ask if they need to come do an inspection. My philosophy is to let the inspector say he doesn't need to come check rather than have him ask later, "Why didn't you call me?"
I don't have a lot of photos for this phase. Kept forgetting to take them!
Photos
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| The garage concrete will be in three parts, the driveway, door sill, and floor slab. Here you see the form for the door sill. The foam is tapered to avoid sharp corners in the concrete. We added rebar after I took this photo. On the inside of the wall you see a strip of 3/4" Dow Styrofoam. It is positioned to be directly under the door will create a thermal break between the sill and floor slab. The garage will be semi-heated, meaning that it will be well insulated and will have a heater in it. Because of the ICF foundation and main wall I expect the garage to stay close to 50F even without added heat. The thermal break in the doorway will help a lot to achieve this. |
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| Garage entry door threshold. Same idea here with the blue foam thermal break. In the case of the door thresholds the concrete extends about 2" beyond the foam, is sloped to the outside, and overlaps the dimple membrane. Water that gets on it will run down around the front and onto the membrane. The front porch slab and patio slabs will have a 1" to 2" gap between the slab and house wall. This will allow water to drain down around the slab and not puddle up against the wall. I'm doing this because the slabs will be only 1" below the top of the threshold for accessibility. I will be using ADA sills in the doors that span over the thermal break. What this all means is that I won't have a high barrier to prevent water intrusion under the doors so I have to use a different approach. Winter snows may present a problem. We'll find out. Like I always told my kids, "You can't have everything!" |
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| Patio door threshold form. Here the thermal barrier foam strip will be installed when the house floor is installed. All of the thresholds will be finished with something like SpreadStone or SpreadRock so I'm expecting them to look pretty decent. Rock thresholds would have been nice but they're a lot more pricey and more work than concrete. |
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| Freshly placed garage slab. The near doorway is into the kitchen. Because there won't be the temperature difference from one side to the other like the outside doors there is no thermal break foam strip here. |
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Posted to dmaceld by MacArthur in Nampa, ID
on 5/11/2008 9:31:30 PM
April 15, 2008
While we were waiting for the garage slab to be poured Tom was busy building pony walls, hanging ledger boards on the long walls, and installing sheetrock. We were doing as much work as possible in the crawl space area before we started the floors. Lot easier to do plumbing and hang sheetrock when you can stand up!
Tom started out using the water level to level the ledger boards but after one board was half fastened in place he decided to use the laser to double check things. Turns out the water level wasn't working out near as well as we expected and the board was about 1/8" off in places. He changed to using the laser from then on. Just goes to show the simpler system isn't always better!
Because my heating/cooling system will be moving air through the crawl space it is considered a part of the living space of the house. Therefore there can be no exposed foam insulation according to the International Residential Code. I concluded the easiest and least expensive way to cover the foam was to use sheetrock. But, because we wanted to put it on before the floor was in, and because there was no way to know what the weather would be like, I didn't want to risk using ordinary interior rock. One rainfall and it would have been toast. So we installed exterior sheetrock. Not sure but I think it may be about half again the cost. Later, when I was washing down the rat slab I sprayed water on it with not affect at all.
We also finished the insulation on the footings. We cut and glued a strip on the top side of the footing. I mitered the edges of the side and top strips and covered the corner with aluminum tape. There is no exposed foam insulation in the crawl space at all.
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| Insulation and sheet rock around a footing step. |
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| Footing insulation finished with aluminum tape. |
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| Master bathroom toilet drain. Took some doing to get a configuration that would fit and have acceptable venting. The vent goes behind the ledger board and will continue up to the attic space in the foam. The 2 1/2" of foam will cover a 2" vent pipe but fittings do need to be chiseled into the concrete a bit. This is the only place where I had to hack out a bit of structural material to make something fit. I had to cut about a 2" notch in the ledger board, but we have an extra connector here. You also see the second part of the ICFVL connector system. The metal you see is a J piece that wraps around under the beam. There are 8 screws going through the front metal and board into the connector plate that is embedded in the concrete of the wall. |
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| We continued to use the crawl space half of the chicken ladder after backfilling was done.
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| Pony walls completed. Where there were sharp changes in the contour of the crawl space floor we used headers. These places also provide access points for moving around in the crawl space. |
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| Center beam and post under the bedrooms. Here you can see how much deeper the crawl space is on the low side of the grade. |
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| The two short pony walls are for the showers. In this case the joists hang from the side of the pony wall instead of resting on top. All the joists are 9 1/2" deep, except under the showers. There I used 7 1/4" LVL, the same material as the ledger boards, hung in 9 1/2" joist hangers. This puts the shower floor 2 1/4" below the bathroom floors. This will be adequate for a mud base for the shower tile and will make the shower floor the same level as the bath floor. Here again this is for accessibility. The showers will be curbless thus facilitating wheel chair and walker access. |
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Posted to dmaceld by MacArthur in Nampa, ID
on 5/11/2008 9:27:43 PM
March 26, 2008
Pouring the foundation wall went well with no problems at all. We used a 7 bag pea gravel mix with a slump of about 6". The concrete flowed real well and consolidation was no problem. The contractor used a 2 1/2" grout hose on the pumper which made it easy to keep the concrete dropping into the wall cavity. He dropped very little on the top of the forms. I had laid down 4" wide duct tape on the top edge to keep the nubbins free of concrete but it was hardly needed!
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| Concrete pumper. I rented a storage container for equipment and material storage until the garage is complete enough to use for such. I hung a canvas, weighted at the bottom with a chain, in the doorway to cut down on the wind blown dust getting into the shed, as we call it. The wind has been blowing almost constantly right from the get-go. It's getting old! |
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| Concrete contractor, Paul, in red shirt, my ICF supplier in brown, and a representative from Idaho Concrete, doing the pour in a 3 block high section of the wall. |
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| All done! I could hardly believe how little concrete, or water, leaked out from under or through the wall blocks. I must have done a better job of foaming the blocks to the footing than I thought! |
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| Here you see 4 conduit ells that extend from the crawl space up to the surface of the yet to be placed garage slab. These will be used to pass PEX water supply lines from the garage into the crawl. The circle with an X that you see was supposed to be another sleeve for a sanitary drain line. Fortunately, a few days later when I noticed that we had missed putting the sleeve in before the pour, the concrete was still green enough to punch a hole through fairly easily!
The octagon metals are Simpson ICFVL connectors to which the ledger board will be attached. Floor joists will be hung from the ledger. |
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| Jake, Paul's son, is placing concrete in the bedroom end of the foundation wall. |
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| There are four of these columns for the porch posts. The pad was poured with the footings and the tube with the foundation wall. This gives you an idea about how much fill there will be in the front of the house. The porch slab will be about 6" above the tube. I don't like walls in the yard, and front yards don't get used much except for looks, so we'll have a sloped front yard from the porch to the street. |
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| This shows what the concrete looks like after it has set inside the form. |
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Posted to dmaceld by MacArthur in Nampa, ID
on 5/11/2008
April 1, 2008
The next phase of the project was to waterproof the exterior of the foundation wall. There's isn't universal agreement among ICF builders as to how much waterproofing is really needed, and what the best approach to it is. The method used depends on the severity and likelihood of water coming up against the wall. In my case since SW Idaho is pretty arid and most of the water around the house is coming only from sprinklers I decided I didn't need a super duper waterproofing system. The system I chose was to place dimple plastic membrane over the foam with no emulsion or peel & stick on the foam. The foam is quite water resistant but not absolutely water proof. The idea of the dimple membrane is that water that encroaches from the ground to the wall will run down the membrane to the french drain. Whatever water does get past the membrane will readily run down the wall because the dimples keep the plastic away from the foam. The air gap between the membrane and foam prevents water from building up pressure against the foam.
Two lessons learned:
First, the dimensional stability of the dimple membrane is very sensitive to temperature. We installed quite a bit of it in the morning when the weather was cool and not much sunshine. Later in the day when the sun had shone on it for awhile it expanded. That caused, and there still is in several places, quite a bit of buckling between the fasteners which means the top edge is not flat to the foam. The section of the end of the bedroom wing we loosened and reinstalled when it was warm from the sun in the afternoon. That part of the membrane is staying snug against the foam. So, if you ever use DMX or Platon membrane try to install it only when it, the plastic, is quite warm. I will be putting stucco type coating between grade and bottom of the Hardiplank we'll be using and will lap that over the dimple membrane. That should give me a good enough "shingle" system to ensure water runs down in front of the dimple and not behind it.
Second lesson learned is that you don't always do better buying from Lowes or Home Depot than from a contractor. I bought drain fabric to put around the rock covering the French drain. The stuff was quite thin and flimsy and the excavator/landscape contractor guys had a hard time handling it and getting it wrapped around the rock nicely. Fabric they would have used, and which they did use to cover the rocks in the pit the French drain goes into, was wider, thicker, tougher, and whole lot better for a wrap around. The money I saved in material was lost on time and aggravation.
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| Dimple membrane looking in direction of DR corner. In all these photos you can see the exterior French drain. It was covered in a sock and covered over with drain rock and drain fabric. |
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| Mfr instructions say to install the membrane horizontal and to trim the top to fit the grade. I chose to install it with the top following the grade and trim it at the bottom. Made for a cleaner installation. |
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| Master bdrm corner of house. We used 45s to drop the French drain past the footing steps to make it easier to snake it if ever that is needed. |
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| Here you see how the dimple membrane is carried over the edge of the footing to assure that the water gets routed to the drain and not the top of the footing. We didn't try to cover the corner of the footing. I figure that the water problem shouldn't be great, if it really exists at all, so there was no compelling need to get carried away with absolute waterproofing. I hope I don't get proven wrong! We installed 4 cleanouts for the French drain around the house, just in case. Because the driveway will cover the ground in front of the garage I didn't do waterproofing there. |
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| Backfilling in progress. |
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| View from the street to the front porch. There's about 3' of fill around the columns. |
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| The bedroom corner backfilled. Eventually the finished grade will come just even or above the membrane. One thing I feel good about is that the finish grade lines and foundation depth are working out very closely to what I had modeled in 3-D mode in TurboCAD. When we started the excavation I was concerned we were going deeper than I should have planned, but in the end it's working out just right! Sometimes computers really do work right!! |
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| The recessed area will be the back patio. Three doors open to the patio, the patio door from the living room, the garage entry door, and the entry door into the master bathroom. There two reasons for an exterior door to the bathroom. First, one can get into the bathroom to clean up after getting totally grubby working outside without having to traipse through the whole house, and it can serve as an emergency exit from the bedroom wing. This latter aspect is particularly valuable I think if the house is occupied by a wheel chair bound person. I'm making the house accessible so quite possible such an occupant will be there some day. |
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Posted to dmaceld by MacArthur in Nampa, ID
on 5/10/2008
March 20, 2008
Finally we are the point where we can actually start stacking blocks!
Photos
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| My helper, Tom, is shown here starting to lay the first course of half high blocks in the low section of the footing. |
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| The foundation wall is here about 1/2 stacked. |
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| To level the top of the foundation wall I bought a water level as I thought it would be easier to use than the laser level I was using. Here it is set up at the base elevation of the top of the foundation wall. |
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| Close up of the water level. Later, when we were installing the ledger board Tom determined it was not as easy to use nor as accurate as the laser level. We only use the laser now. |
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| Close up of water in the level tube. The tube became clouded and the water meniscus combined to make it harder to read than one would first think.
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| Here the foundation wall is totally stacked except for the access hole. |
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| The garage portion of the foundation wall. |
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| We used ICF bracing on the bedroom section of the foundation wall. It was 4 1/2 blocks high. |
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| 2 x 4 bracing along the top of the wall. This turned out not to work too well because the 2 x 4s were somewhat crooked. You also see the "chicken ladder" crossover we used to get over the wall. If you look close you can see the wall isn't quite straight. Between the crooked 2 x 4s and the chicken ladder putting a twist on the wall the wall ended up with kind of a "snake" curve. In a later post you'll see how I straightened it out when we started stacking the main wall. |
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| Here you see a couple of braces stacked to the ground to hold the wall straight, or a least pretty much so. We found that even with only a two block high wall there is a fair amount of flexibility and keeping the wall dead straight can be a bit of a challenge. |
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Posted to dmaceld by MacArthur in Nampa, ID
on 5/10/2008
March 8, 2008
Part of the process of making the house energy efficient is insulating the footings. I used Dow Thermax and R-Max because the insulation needs to be fire ignition resistant. This is because I will be circulating the air from the crawl space through the living space into the attic and back.
We glued black poly vapor barrier over the footing and the insulation to the poly. When it was finished the vapor barrier covered all the crawl space ground and footings and extended up the crawl space wall about 1'. This put the insulation on the conditioned side of the vapor barrier.
The next step was to install a french drain/vent around the interior perimeter of the footing. It will be vented up through the roof and goes under the footing to a drain pit outside the house. It's purpose will be to drain any water that gets in under the footing and vent off any soil gas, such as radon, that may happen to be present and water vapor that may come up out of the soil.
Over the vapor barrier we installed 3/4" blue Dow Styrofoam. I will be using the crawl space as the heating/cooling supply plenum so the insulation will minimize heat loss downward into the ground. To protect the insulation and keep the crawl space clean we poured a nominal 2" thick concrete "rat slab".
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| 2" thick foil covered insulation glued to side of footing. The poly vapor barrier covers the footing and wraps around under the edge of the insulation. |
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| After the insulation was in place we put in 4" perforated PVC pipe all around the inside perimeter for a combination drain & vent. It's covered with a "sock" and drain rock. The poly was then spread over the rock and joined to poly that covered the entire crawl space ground and all the interior footings. |
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| 3/4" blue Dow Styrofoam covers the entire crawl space. The sand piles helped to keep the wind from lifting up the foam and were later covered by the concrete. |
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| Because the lot has a 4' slope the crawl space floor has some steep slopes in it. The concrete man was concerned about holding the concrete on the slick surface of the Styrofoam on the slopes. I came up with the idea of laying down foam beads using Dow blue can foam. I think it helped as the concrete stuck real good. |
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| Pouring the rat slab. The concrete was as stiff as could be readily pumped and had fiber in it. |
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| Super looking slab! Looks like a skateboard rink! Sure will make it nice doing plumbing and HVAC work in the crawl space! |
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| Well, you can guess what happened! The next morning there were dirt clods on the new concrete. The sign took care of the problem!
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Posted to dmaceld by MacArthur in Nampa, ID
on 5/10/2008
March 4, 2008
I had the concrete contractor do all the forming for the footings. I'm glad I did. It's obvious there is a fair investment in forms and form ties, and experience in doing the work makes a huge difference! His method worked great because of the steps and the unevenness of the exacavation. For nominal 12" deep footing he used 24" form boards. After they were in place he then struck a chalk line inside the form and installed nails at the finished concrete level. This approach meant he didn't have to have the forms a specific height and the didn't have to level the top of the forms. Steps were easily formed with just a vertical board at the step.
He used brackets, or form ties, at the top and bottom of the forms. The ones at the bottom stayed under the concrete and I paid for them. The top ones he reuses on the next job.
I connected the electrical grounding conductor to the rebar and brought it up through the footing. Some inspectors reportedly want to see the rebar extended out of the footing for the grounding connection, and others want the conductor to extend 20' along the rebar in the footing. Neither is required by the NEC.
Lesson Learned:
Because of how the excavation was done, we needed to add a half block step to the lowest section of the footing. BuildBlock ICF blocks are 16" nominal size when stacked, but because of the nubbins are actually 16 1/2" with 1/2" nubbins on both top and bottom. This means the solid portion of the block is 15 1/2" so it's center is 8 1/4" from both top and bottom. When you cut the block in half you have a 7 3/4" solid block plus 1/2" nubbin. In order for the top of a full block on top of the half block to be at the same elevation as the top of the full block on the next step of the footing, the step for the half block should have been only 7 3/4", not 8" as we made it. We had to add a 1/4" shim under all the half blocks on the lowest step of the footing.
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| Forms for the bedroom 2 & 3 in the foreground. Living, DR, kitchen in background. The ring forms are for posts to support the center beam. The ground sloped enough that we opted for posts in this area rather than a pony wall. |
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| Forms for the master Bdrm at right and garage in far background. |
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| Grounding conductor connected to rebar in footing. The NEC requires the service ground to be connected to the footing rebar if possible. |
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| Pumping was the best way to get the concrete to the forms. |
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| Contractor is leveling the concrete in the form. |
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| Completed pour showing the 8" step, which should have been only 7 3/4"! |
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Posted to dmaceld by MacArthur in Nampa, ID
on 3/30/2008
The excavation went fine with the exception of one significant foul up. The contractor's workers misread the story pole somehow or other and ended up digging the lowest part of the footing about 12" deeper than it was supposed to be. I ended up having to pour a 6" thicker footing than planned plus 8" more wall than I planned. Oh well, if that's the worst of the problems on this project I can't complain too much.
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| Garage area excavation. The excavator choose to dig out the entire garage area rather than just trench out around the footing. I think that was influenced by the size of his Bobcat bucket. The hole is deeper than it really needed to be but I opted to not go shallower because that would have necessitated another step in the footing and I already had two levels of steps planned. |
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| This shows the house part of the excavation. The portion at the far right is where they dug deeper than should have. Because of the grade of the lot the footing steps twice, once 16" and again 24". |
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Posted to dmaceld by MacArthur in Nampa, ID
on 3/30/2008
I'm finally starting my journal so this first entry is kind of a test run to see how it goes.
I'm building a 2000 sf insulated concrete form (ICF) house, all on one level with an oversized two car garage. The entire house envelope including crawl space and attic will be sealed and conditioned. Not only will the house be energy efficient but will also be accessible. All one level with wide doors and hallways and large bathrooms with curbless showers. I plan to sell it after two years and will advertise it as being wheel chair and walker friendly.
I got started on Feb 25. The pic shows the bare lot with paint marks on the ground for the excavation.
The attached files are the TurboCAD 3-D rendition of the house and the overview floor plan.
I'll post more photos and comments later.
Mac
Photos
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| Bare lot with excavation markings |
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FilesHouse plans 46-C.pdfHouse plans 51-2.pdf
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