Layers of foundation

 

  

Filling in the electrical/phone conduit and well pipe/conduit ditches.

    

The wood frames have been removed from the footings; you can see the concrete edge and the (dirty) foam alongside and below it. The black stuff is capillary break, which keeps water from seeping up into the walls. And the footing drains are in between the footings and the dirt wall. Tomorrow we get more rebar for the next layer of foundation.

That's a lot of concrete!

Our concrete (all 66 tons of it!!) is curing -- and, fortunately, it cures better when wet. This week we'll be seeing less dramatic changes. The guys are removing the footing frames, installing a footing drain and a water barrier, and putting ecofoam against the sides of the excavation.

At our site meeting yesterday, the footing drains (and more hay for mud control) awaited installation:

       

 

The footing drains are made of packing peanuts!

Another fascinating aspect of house-building is the prevalence of lien notices -- or, more accurately, "Notice of Right to a Lien." Each subcontractor wants to ensure that they get paid, so their credit companies send us lien notices stating that our property may be subject to a lien unless this particular supplier is paid within a specified time. The supplier/subcontractors get paid by our contractor, in this case Hammer & Hand; these are just heads-up notices for us that these people had better get paid.

These lien notices are sent certified mail and must be received with a signature (which is a challenge, since we're so rarely home to sign for them). So far, we have received three of them -- and we've only been at this a few weeks! This is standard practice in this industry, and we were warned by our lender and by our builder that we would be receiving a lot of these. Our lender has built lien-protection into the way the contractors are paid, so that the subcontractors can't cash their checks without releasing their right to lien, so we have no worries. But still -- this seems like a lot of extra work, time and money. I hate to think that that the cost of this insanity is part of what I'm paying to build my house, but of course it is. This system undoubtedly arose out of necessity, but it still seems excessive.

Concrete!

The foundation is taking shape! You can still see the Ufer.

Lots and lots of rebar

Lots of rebar awaits the pouring of the concrete foundation tomorrow. The piece of rebar with the yellow tag is the Ufer -- the ground for the house. That one piece of rebar is longer than the rest and reaches all the way to the exterior of the house (past the foam wall in the foreground of the photo, which separates the inside of the house from the outside). The electrician will connect the Ufer to the electrical panel with copper wire to ground the house. Incidentally, this section of the house is our laundry room and mechanicals room/drum room. Above these will be the entry, mudroom and a small bathroom.

No pool yet ...

A steady downpour on Friday drenched us, followed by bits of rain over the weekend. Thankfully, our home excavation isn't filled with water -- it actually looks remarkably normal, if a bit more muddy than previously. The rebar for the foundation was delivered Friday and it's gradually going in. In theory, concrete will be poured this Thursday.

At our site meeting this morning, we learned that PGE wants to charge us $6,000 to run electricity from   the adjacent property to our main connector. Sigh. This is one of those costs that we had no idea would crop up. Another surprise cost is the septic pump, which is not standard but in our case is necessary to pump from the tank to the leach field, which sits higher than the tank. We keep thinking we're well set to avoid all the extra costs inherent in building that we've been warned about, repeatedly, by everyone who knows anyone who has ever built a house (after all, we've already made most of the decisions and priced out just about everything), but we've been hit by two big surprises already. What other fun surprises are in store for us? Fingers crossed, nothing major ...

This is Oregon, after all...

Framing on the footings continues. The black pipe sticking up in the middle is the plumbing ventilation, which will go through our roof. Tomorrow there should be another one on the eastern side of the house (toward the top of this photo).

We've had amazing luck with beautiful, sunny weather through mid-October, but rain is forecast for tomorrow and into next week. The hay will give the guys a non-muddy surface to walk on.

Framing the footings

Our entire excavation is surrounded by hills of dirt that 

will eventually be relocated and regraded into yard.

A lot has happened since Monday morning! The footings are being framed, almost ready for concrete. At 15 inches, these are deeper than most footings.

Inside the framing, you can see the orange crosshairs that mark the southwestern corner of our house. The orange line is the inner corner of our guest room. From the orange line to the wood frame is wall thickness -- approximately three feet thick, with an R value of 50.

Anatomy of a superinsulated wall

On Monday we had our weekly site meeting with Hammer & Hand. At these meetings we learn what is planned for the upcoming week(s), what went well/not so well the previous week, and what decisions need to be made (usually by us, the homeowners). Yesterday we walked along the foam that is the base of our footing, and we also got a quick lesson on the anatomy of a superinsulated house's wall:

The line on the geofoam marks the division between the interior of the house and the exterior. The tape measure shows how deep the walls are: The external parts of the wall (framing, lots of insulation, waterproofing and siding) are to the left of the line, and the internal parts of the wall are to the right. (The nail in the foreground is used to nail the geofoam to the concrete.)

If you look closely at the bottom of this photo, you can see a faint orange line running along the concrete. The geofoam in the photo above is nailed to the cement, and the orange line matches up with the line on the geofoam in the top photo. Together, this concrete and the geofoam form the base of our footings, which are the concrete mass that will support our foundation.

For more information about our house, you can also refer to Hammer & Hand's website page for our project: http://hammerandhand.com/pumpkin-ridge-passive-house

(If any of you Hammer & Hand pros read this and spot mistakes -- since I only think I know what I'm saying -- please e-mail me with corrections!)

The foundation grows bit by bit

Our foundation now has gravel and some foam (plus a boy). 

We have cement!

Not a lot of cement, but it's a start.

And we also have electrical wires running through the conduit to the well, to power the well pump.

Water and electricity trenches

Between yesterday and today, long trenches have appeared on the site: one with electrical conduit in it, running from the street junction, and one snaking from the well to the house. In addition, a bunch of stakes have popped up in our giant hole, helping to layout the lines of the foundation.

The electrical conduit trench runs from here to the house.

Markers help layout the lines of the foundation.

This trench runs from the house ... 

... past the burn pile and to the well.