Foundation Walls

The footing is done. The foundation wall is constructed next. This house will have a concrete foundation wall that is partially below and partially above grade. Concrete on its own does not have tensile strength (but does have high compressive strength) so steel re-bar is used within the concrete to strengthen it. Forms are placed on the footing around the re-bar and then wet concrete is placed in to form the wall. The next day, when the concrete has cured, the forms are removed and you have your finished concrete wall.

Installing form for the walls

Footing with forms removed

End of excavation phase

Early this week, the excavation - or digging phase of construction finished. Because I kept the foundation systems so simple, it only took one day for one man to prepare both the house and garage footing locations.

Some more pictures of dirt:

tamping the soil under the garage slab

the dug footings for the house

Next up: the mason begins his phase of the construction: forms, re-bar and concrete!

Digging for the Footings

With the site prepared, digging for the footings and foundation can begin. This morning Dan and Glenn shot the heights and today Glenn is scooping out the soil at the perimeter of the house site. I've always believed that figuring out the heights - whether on an addition where you want the new finished floor to match the existing floor, or on a new house where you want a certain amount of steps up (or not) from grade to finished floor - is one of the most difficult parts of construction. It takes some thought and calculation and it's so important to get it right to know how deep to dig.


This area is known for it's clay soil and high water table, so during the design phase, and in order to be economical, this house was planned with a crawlspace on grade only. This means minimal digging- scraping of top soil, really. (you can see it piled in the background of the photo) We end up with a slab that is on the grade level. It also means that we don't need to install a footing drain to keep that space dry - very valuable in this soil type, where I've seen a newly dug foundation filled with water like a bathtub.

Because we live in an area where the ground freezes, we do need to dig below the frost line for the footings. The footings are the wide base that distributes all the loads of the building to the ground. They need to be stable, and therefore, below the frost line where soil doesn't move.

Day 2: Driveway

Glenn, the excavator, continues to make quick progress on the site. All the stumps are piled in the way-back, all the cedars are chipped into a mulch pile behind the future garage site, and all the hardwood is cut for splitting into firewood. (Mike chain-sawed that last night)

Today the driveway was located and formed, a drainpipe installed under its apron, and landscaping fabric laid along its length. A small front-end loader beeped around the site, no doubt annoying the neighbors. Dump truck loads of  crushed shale were delivered to spread and compact for the driveway base.

Site Work Begins

The permit was granted and now the site work has begun. This is big, loud work. First the strong trucks pull long trailers up the road to drop off equipment. Yesterday a worker went up in a bucket with a chainsaw to safely take down a dead tree that was leaning toward the street. Now a large, orange excavator rolls around the site using it's claws to pull out the overgrown, gnarled cedar hedge. A chipper will chop the softwoods and limbs into mulch. Saws and splitters will chunk the hardwoods into firewood for next winter.

Like I said, this work is BIG. This work is LOUD. It seems so destructive. Neighbors look on, some curious, some concerned about the changes. It is such a contrast to the quiet design phase that I think of as "creating a house". My pen scratching on paper... My computer mouse clicking around the drawing screen... My mind looking for solutions, trying ideas...
 
But it only seems destructive and different. This loud work implements the quietly created site plan. The buildings were purposefully placed on the site to keep as many of the healthy trees as possible. The excavator operator controls the machine efficiently and thoughtfully such that his work is not actually too unlike my work of pen on paper. It occurs to me that it's really just a matter of scale and what tool one is skilled at using.