Foundation

You may wonder why there was no progress between log delivery in late April and the start of the foundation on May 19th. One of the problems any person acting as their own general contractor must face is delays. You have to plan for them and not be surprised when they happen. In our case the state of Arizona requires all blue prints to be "approved" by a licensed Arizona engineer. This process should have taken only a few days but our engineer was extremely slow. He took just about 5 weeks to approve our plans. Why? Not because there was anything wrong with them but he is 72 years old and only works 2 days a week. This was an engineer Kuhns Brothers chose and had they known he only worked a couple days a week, I know they would have chosen someone else. It was just one of those things that happens when you're building a house. This delay meant that we were going to have to implement plan "B". In this case that meant hiring a concrete contractor to do the foundation. We had planned to do it ourselves (because we were going to have the time) but this delay forced us to pay to have it done. We were lucky and found a small local contractor that came very highly recommended. He also offered a substantial discount for cash. That was just what we wanted to hear so he was hired and started work the day after we got our building permit. What would have taken the three of us over 6 weeks to do these guys did in about 10 days (actually a little longer but there was a three day holiday in there). The only problem we had was communication. The only guys that spoke English were the Forman and the owner. (I didn't ask if they all had green cards.) In the end we are very satisfied with their work and the price was very reasonable. When we did the math the actual difference between doing it ourselves and having these guys do the work was less than 5% of the estimated overall construction costs. It chewed up a little of our reserve, but that's another thing you need to plan for. Always plan on a 20% over run when it comes to the cost of everything. Do that and all the little surprises you'll find along the way won't be quite so bad.

The first thing you need is a building permit. As explained earlier ours was delayed almost 5 weeks. Also keep in mind that these things aren't free. Our county bases the cost of the permit on total square feet but it is weighted based on living area, garages, and porch area. This one cost a little over $1700. Check with the building department first so you wont be surprised later.

This shows the footer preparation. A strong foundation requires a lot of rebar but each area of the country has different requirements so make sure you check local codes or hire a competent contractor to do the work.

In our county the water line is required to be run through the footer. Here you see the 3/4" copper water line all ready for the pour. The blue plastic sleeve is to protect the copper from the concrete. Over time the acids in the concrete will eat through the copper if it isn't protected. The rest of the line is already hooked up to the water meter out by the street.

Because we have a lot of trees that interfere with access to the building area so we had to use a concrete pumper with a 200 foot hose in order to reach the whole foundation.

This is the only way to pour concrete as far as I'm concerned. It took about 2 hours and 6 or 7 concrete trucks (I lost count) to fill all the 24" wide x 24" deep footers.

The entire time the concrete was being poured it was checked with a laser level to make sure it was being poured to the correct height.

Once the concrete is poured vertical rebar is inserted which will help tie the block walls to the footer later.

Once the footers are dry the block can be laid. Our local codes require rebar every 4th course plus all around the perimeter at the top.

Here is our Spanish speaking crew. When you have enough help the job goes quickly.

Here you can see me (with the goofy hat) setting the waste line which will connect to our septic system. Even though you may have a very competent contractor working for you, As the general contractor it's your job to make sure things are done correctly. In this case my contractor had no clue where to place this line since it isn't shown on the plans. A good reason for checking your contractor's work along the way.

All block that will extend above ground level is decorative. We had planned on using ICF's (Insulated Concrete Forms) if we had done the foundation ourselves. In that case the rigid foam insulation would have been covered with a veneer of stone. Because we decided on block due to the delay, we used this decorative style which will save the price and labor of a stone veneer.

Our plans call for exactly 3 feet between the finished garage floor and the house sub flooring. By maintaining that relationship with the foundation walls, we were able to lower the garage floor another 18" in order to gain even more room. In most cases this wouldn't be necessary but this modification will allow us to use 10' tall garage doors. Because the shop will have a lift we can use all the ceiling height we can get.

We have a lot of porch area and one of the changes we made was to have all the porch piers done in decorative block. Each pier has an 18" square x 18" deep footer. This house has a total of 24 porch piers. This is a photo of the back porch piers and there are 18 more all across the front of the house.

Keep in mind that this is a crawl space and not a basement. Therefore the piers for the main floor support beams were done with a combination of decorative and regular block. There was no reason to be particular here. The floor will remain hard packed dirt since a finished surface is not required and would only be a waste of money.

The final job is to back fill the foundation. Ours was water proofed first and we also used tar impregnated black board on the outside to protect the water seal from damage during the back filling process.

That's all for this update. The garage floor will be poured as soon as the county approves the pre-pour inspection. We have already installed the sill plate material so tomorrow we'll start on the perimeter box. Stay tuned for more frequent updates now that all our delays (hopefully) are behind us.

Check back soon.