Whitehall

The basement and garage slabs were poured yesterday. Four truckloads of concrete were delivered for the job. The basement has two layers of 2 inch Owens Corning Foamular 250 rigid insulation, with Steggo moisture barrier (the yellow sheet) between the layers. It is fall and a lot of leaves fell into the basement over the weekend. I used a leaf blower/vacuum to suck up most of the leaves Sunday afternoon before the Monday pour. The copper sheathing along the top of the foundation is there as part of the jig to make sure the steel beam down the center is the proper height. Ready for the pour They used a laser transit to determine the height of the concrete slab and get it level. They would level a spot every 6 ft or so and then use a long board or a vibrating metal strip to smooth and level the concrete between the measured spots. Pouring the basement slab The concrete pump truck is a pretty interesting piece of equipment. I'm sure it is expensive. But it certainly beats usi

The forms were removed from the foundation walls and Keith quickly found that one of the walls was shifted 1-1/2 inches from where it should have been located. It will be a pain for the concrete company to cut off the excess concrete so we can finish the outside the way it is supposed to be. If you look at the picture below, you can see in the circle that the near wall (bottom arrow) doesn't exactly line up with the far wall (upper arrow). Foundation wall out of alignment Gravel was "shot" into the basement. I hadn't understood the term "shoot the gravel" until I was there and saw that the gravel truck has a long conveyor belt that literally shoots the gravel into the corners of the basement. The lighting isn't great, but if you look carefully, you can see the gravel against the foundation wall. I've marked it with an arrow to make it easier to find. Shooting the gravel Today, Nov 15, 2017,was the day to set the steel beams and basement

The foundation walls were formed and poured this week. It took 7 truck loads of concrete.

Once the deconstruction was finished, the concrete firm dug out the basement area and the trenches for the footings. We had to remove about 630 cu yds of dirt. The backfill and grading is about 250 cu yds and we only had room for about 60 cu yds onsite. So we had to truck a lot of dirt out and will have to bring some of it back. The concrete firm then framed the footings for the pour. Some of the trenches are pretty deep to get to solid ground. That will cost us extra for more concrete in the foundation walls. The footing inspector forgot about the call for an inspection until late in the day, but he finally arrived about 4pm. Thirty cubic yards of concrete was ordered, to be delivered in three trucks. A concrete pump truck and the footing team truck were parked in the small space off the end of the garage footer. The concrete trucks had to back down the driveway - about 200 yards long, with a 90-degree turn in the middle. Starting the footing pour The first two concrete trucks

We're replacing our house. The location is a great waterfront spot, but we've been unable to determine how to make the old house (a colonial design) work for what we want, even if we were to renovate. We found ourselves spending most of our time on the enclosed back porch. Why not design a house that achieved that effect all the time in most of the rooms? We also had two large trees, a maple and a will oak, adjacent to the house and we wanted to save them. Our design moves the house about 8 ft away from these trees and raises the main floor 18 inches to allow for better drainage from around the house (another problem we wanted to address). Having done a major renovation before, we wanted to do a complete replacement, including foundation. PrecisionCraft While reading about energy efficient homes, we became aware of  Bensonwood . Their style matched what we wanted, which was something like those in these two interior pictures. Bensonwood We came up with a prelimina