Strong Foundations....Continued.

After the footings were done they put up the forms for the foundation walls. Here's how they do it. First they sprayed the inside of these boards with a special oil...so they can get them off after. Then they measure twice...using some special tools. then they start assembling. It is noisy! Lots of banging. They are reinforced with re-bar inside - see picture below.

The front entrance

The garage

Then the cement truck comes to fill them up and they cure overnight. We had our front entrance done first so we could use the front door again. We were tired of having a pit in the front yard and having to go around the back of the house all the time. Especially when visitors came.

Here he is putting rebar up vertically so that when we pour the cement floor over top it will be attached to the pad. This should help it from settling and cracking.

Then they take the forms off, it cures for a week and then we can backfill and pour the floor.

sorry about the lack of pictures of the finished foundation. I was busy for a couple days there and missed a few before pics.

Make sure you stay tuned...there's LOTS more exciting things to come. Things are happening fast now!

Strong Foundations!

I've learned a lot about having strong foundations. Apparently before they build the foundation walls - they build the footings. This is so that the foundation walls have a hard level surface to sit on. Our footings had to be poured 4 feet into the ground(below freezing level)

First they put up the forms for the Garage and the extended front entrance. Our water table is very high and it has been a really wet summer, so I had to keep apologizing for all the mud the workers had to trudge through. UGH! The mud and the dust still continues!

After the forms were up, then the pumper truck came(not sure what the proper name is for that. ) Because of the nature of our lot and the condition of the hole it was easier to use the long arm to spread the cement. a regular truck would have a hard time getting close enough and they felt we were too close to the fence to use wheelbarrows. It was exciting to have another HUGE machine in our yard. Micah had been in heaven!

After the cement is in then the go around and level and smooth it. They also layed lengths of re-bar in it for strength. I thought it looked really great when they were done with it. I think they were happy to get our job done...the ground was so muddy and soft that they had a hard time getting their forms to stay in place.

Then the cement dried overnight and they came back and took all the forms off. Voila! Footings! A few days later they came back and put up the forms for the foundation walls...to be continued...

The BIG Guns

The next step in our adventure was to use a special saw to cut the cement pad at the front of the house. We needed to make room for our foundation. I did not take any pictures of this either. I know! What was I thinking?!! Basically it is like a circular saw but it has a diamond blade on it for cutting through concrete and re-bar. It was very loud (earplugs required) and very messy. The dust was crazy, so I helped by running the hose on the area. It took a couple hours but we finally got our 3 cuts made. We had to take about 3 feet off the north end of the slab and then about 2 feet on either side of the front door. The slab was removed and then the BIG excavators came to dig everything up. The kids loved this part!

Here goes the foundation from the Chimney Chase. It's out of the way, finally!

A huge THANK YOU to Shane and the guys from Jenex for all their help. You guys are awesome!

These next pictures are taken from out the front window of him breaking up the cement pad and digging the trench in the front for the new entrance foundation and footings. You can see the line where we cut in the second picture.

That's all for now folks. I tried 50 times to upload some video clips...but I'll have to learn how to make that work. For now, you'll just have to use your imaginations! =)

Next - Footings and Foundations!