ForeLocke Farm: I see eff?

So I was down in Mexico, and I saw this foundation, it's name was eff.

Ok, even by my standards, that was bad.

On to the basement!
I hummed and hawed on this one for a long time (years), how to do the basement, since costs can creep up pretty fast here. I'd thought about poured, but it's lots of money, and most of it is labour, somebody elses, plus you can get marginal results, if the contractor is shoddy, or you pay a ton for someone really good. As it was we already used a pile of cement on the footings (whaddya gonna do when your house weighs 50000lbs) but you shouldn't skimp here, ever!

I thought about cement block, but really it's not strong enough, unless you fill the space between with concrete, so then you're not really saving that much.

The problem with both of these types of foundations is that they have no thermal value, so you have to insulate on top of the cost, plus it's hard to do it right, after the fact.

Keeping this in mind, I'd also looked at the alternative.

In the end, I was lucky enough to talk to a guy at our local home show 2 years ago, who is the Ontario distributer for Quad-Lock ICF, which is a phenominal, DIY friendly, reasonably priced way to do it, and he really likes working with end-users like me.

Sold!

So over the course of a few days, myself and a bunch of friends (new and old) put this thing together, it's so light and easy to work with, I even had my kids and mother-in-law (all 98lbs of her) helping.

This is the first complete course laid out, this is probably the second hardest part (of the stacking anyway). The hardest (ok, lets say pickiest) is setting the bottom metal track into the footing.

The cool part? You get to play with a "Weapons Grade" nail gun!

That's also the scary part.

The one thing I wish I'd done was smooth the top of the footing with a trowel, just to make it easier to hold the track without it wiggling around on the bumpy surface, because with the freaking nailer, you don't want to be in the way. It will absolutely kill you if you aren't careful, at the very least you can end up with your steel toe nailed to the cement. Anything that can countersink a 3" nail into a 16" thick block of reinforced concrete absolutely demands respect!

No shots of it in action unfortunately, I was busy keeping my head down, as I let my American buddy Capt James Emge USAF handle most of it (more weapons training than the rest of us).

Here is fellow LHBA member James Linzel starting the first corner on the second course. None of us, including James had ever built with this stuff before, yet after the first row, we averaged 30-40 mins to complete each course! That's fast!

It must be fun, since James drove about 7 hours to get to my place just to help out. Thanks man!
Here's where we were by Sun afternoon, considering the late start Sat, I was happy. We could have gotten more done, but the Quad-Lock distributer wanted to check progress (and make sure we hadn't messed it up), and I still needed to get the gravel inside the footing for the basement!

Here's a video tour inside the foundation, shot by another LHBA member, Pierre Trudel. Pierre was lucky, he didn't have to drive as far to play with Quad-Lock, but a big thanks none the less!

(Note, video temporarily removed due to mass quanties of storage being taken up, I will get it zipped down and back up soon).

So, another week later (so it rained alot) we were ready to pour.

There's more work involved in installing all the bracing and preping to pour than there is stacking all the freaking ICF walls.

Pump truck and cement truck (first of 4) lined up and ready to go!

Here's the happy crew; Robert, the guy with the towel on his head (Quad-Lock distributer, that's part of the corporate dress code) his 2 sons and the pump operator (didn't get his name).