House project; schedule; fall light

Gifts from the Missoula Floods not only include giant rocks (shown in an earlier post), but Radon as well. The granite debris imported from Idaho and Canada contains uranium, which radioactively decays into Radon. Radon is a radioactive, heavy noble gas, so it doesn't react with anything to become tied up and immobile: so it tends to gather in low spots like basements and crawl spaces, waiting to be inhaled and converted into lung cancer. We don't know for a fact that our house WILL have a radon problem, but we're being proactive about it because it's a big deal to do it later. Here's an interesting factoid: Radon is a radioactive gas. What does it decay into? Answer: Lead and Bismuth, two very heavy metals!

The above photo shows part of our Radon mitigation system. What's not shown (underneath the black plastic & buried in a layer of gravel) is a loop of perforated 4" pipe. It's tied to a vent pipe that is near the place where our furnace/gas water heater exhaust chase will go up through the house. Since that's interior to the house and a nice, warm place, we will get natural convection to help pull the radon out from under the slab. We'll do a radon test after the house is buttoned up to see if we will need to add active venting -- i.e., a fan -- to the system to drop the radon to an acceptable level.

One utility issue that came up is the location of the power transformer. As you can see in the above photo, our installers wanted to put the transformer pad about 2 feet from the driveway. We figure that the transformer will probably be "whacked" by a big construction truck even before we move into the place, so we've insisted that the transformer and its pad be moved further away from the road. With this kind of thing going on, we can't just step back and let things happen as they will: goodness knows what other bad design decisions we'd have to live with!

The current schedule:
Today (Tuesday, Sept 28) the basement slab will be poured and all that fancy radon stuff will be covered up. We'll have stubs for the radon exhaust, plus drains for the waste-water tank that will be used for a basement bathroom & shower. We're not planning on putting one in ourselves, but it leaves the option open for a future owner.

After the slab has a chance to set up some, the framing crew will come in later this week and put in the first floor (at least, the support posts, glulams and subflooring). This will give the foundation walls enough rigidity to do the backfill without danger of pushing them in (by the weight of the dirt). You might think that the concrete would be strong enough to do the backfill without the joist system in place, but it's kind of tricky: the most force is not the force pushing the walls in. Force analysis (this is something I learned 'way back in my first physics class) shows that the greatest force will be exerted on the ends of the walls. When the dirt pushes against the foundation, it will bow slightly from the force. This, in turn, tries to pull the endwalls in, but with a much greater force--in fact, at the instant the foundation starts to bow, the force is INFINITE! So the endwall (or more likely the corner transition from sidewall to endwall) would crack. And that's why it is imperative to support the walls so they don't bow in the slightest amount.

Now for something a little different. While the mayhem has been going on, other parts of our yard have been doing what they always do. I saw some nice photos here and there, helped out by the early fall sunlight:

Our old concrete-lined pond (above), now colonized by duckweed which spontaneously showed up. We discovered the pond, filled with tree debris up to the level of the surrounding yard & rehabilitated it. Hydraulic cement patched the cracks and it amazingly still holds water.

More duckweed in a ceramic pot. It probably was transferred from the pond by a thirsty dog or inquisitive raccoon.

Hardy Cyclamens blooming nearby.

Ring Drive Drawings

Attempts to use Google Docs to share some files haven't worked, so I'm putting them here. Clicking on the image will bring up a larger image.



I'm also making one last attempt to put in a link to the spreadsheet I came up with here.

House project -- utility trench

Since the utility work started, several of our neighbors have asked us if we are connecting to the sewer. We weren't sure why they were asking this, since they all know that we don't want to (1) annex into the city; and (2) pay upwards of $200K to run the sewer from the main road to our house. But this sign explains the questions. Our excavators are using this sign (below) to warn drivers about the construction work.... For awhile, we had a trench across the road that was covered by steel plates, but that part of the work is completed so the road has been patched & is now passable again.

The above photo shows a "little" job we had to do before the utility trench could be completed. If you go back to an earlier post (when the foundation walls were being poured), one of the shots shows the concrete truck in the driveway, parked next to a maple on the right side. We had to remove it. We didn't have much notice, so I became a lumberjack and cut the thing down myself. I used our 14" Stihl chain saw and a metal wedge to coerce the tree into falling the correct direction. Kinda fun, but sweaty work. We cut the trunk into rounds that can be further cut down into firewood size, and the branches got piled up off to one side to be chipped at a later date. We're going to have a lot of work like that, after the house goes up.
Above, a shot of the electrical utility conduit being run to the garage and pump house.
A shot of the trench, showing some big tree roots our excavators found -- they actually dug underneath them, to avoid damaging them. They messed them up anyway, hopefully it won't affect the trees much...
A shot from the road, looking toward the house. The trench is about coincident with the right side of the old house foundation. We had some "naked lady" lillies planted there and found a number of the bulbs that had been dug up. Some of the bulbs were huge, larger than a softball.

Foundation waterproofing; door cutout

I have some catchup work to do on the house postings. The foundation is done and as you can see below the waterproofing has been applied.

Here's a shot of the waterproofing system applied to the outside of the foundation. A layer of some tar-like material was painted onto the concrete, then this fiberglass board stuff was stuck on. It also is nailed in place, with big nails and washers. In the back ground you can see several basement windows (or at least the cutouts where they will go). The window cutouts were made by building boxes the right size inside the concrete forms, so the concrete was kept out of those areas.


Here is a shot taken from the right side of the house, where the tandem garage is located. Eventually (hopefully next week!) a slab will be poured here for the garage floor. That probably will happen at the same time the basement floor is poured. There's an interesting feature that's not immediately apparent in this photo. Take a look at the outside (right) side of the garage -- see the cutout in the foundation wall? That's where an outside door will eventually go.

Pouring Concrete!

Here's the concrete truck backed up to the foundation. They're using a concrete pumping rig to get the concrete to the far corners of the house.


Yet another shot of the pumper in action.


A close-up shot of the footing that's part of the wall system.


The concrete folks pounding on the forms to get air bubbles out of the concrete.


This shot shows the pumper boom and the fellow controlling it (directly below the high point of the boom). He's using a wireless controller to move the boom. It looks like the end of the pumper is about 6 feet above the form. Pretty good aim (you can see the concrete coming out of the end of the pipe)...

They did several "lifts" to avoid blowing out the forms. But they really didn't have to wait for the concrete to set up: one pass around the foundation walls took long enough for the concrete to get hard enough for the next pass. The weather was cool and rainy so the conditions were about ideal for getting a good "set" on the concrete.

After the concrete sets up, the next steps will be installing the drains (for a future bathroom and wet bar) and putting the Radon mitigation system in. We're going to leave the basement unfinished, so the wet bar/bathroom will just be the rough-in --- putting in the drains after the slab is poured would be a really big deal, so we're doing what we can to reduce the hassle/cost for future owners (this includes putting in a waste-water storage tank, which has to be below the floor level, too). The Radon mitigation is a proactive step -- we're not sure if we will need it or not, but the odds are pretty good that we'd need to do it anyway. A number of homes in the area have tested very high for Radon, and at least one person has gotten lung cancer from it. This way, we can do it "right" rather than after the fact.

After the drains and Radon stuff are done, the floor will be poured, and the utilities will be run. That all should happen in about 2 weeks. Now, if the rains can just hold off until we get the roof on (fat chance)....