Something's a foot!

Ya know, it's getting harder and harder to come up with clever witticisms for my blog entries...

Anyhoo, regardless of the type of house you build, you need to support it. That usually starts with some kind of footing, even if you are just building a shed on piers, the bottom of the pier must support the load of the house, plus whatever snow, wind, earthquakes, etc, so it is also technically a footer (or footing).

Since we're building a full basement, I needed to build a continuous footer (with a bit of a twist) to support the walls.

This part is pretty much like any footing, buy a bunch of expensive (crappy) lumber and wreck it building forms. Measure 56 times... cut once... cut again... screw it up, get another board.

Check level eleventy billion times...repeat. Speaking of which, I did get slightly off track the first day with a borrowed laser level. Good thing I verified things with a spirit level and got conflicting results.

Our soil has good bearing, so despite the house weighing in excess of 80000lbs, the footing is fairly standard. I did go a little thicker than the required 8", mostly because a 2x8 form board is not 8", stepping up to 2x10's got me 9 1/4" at least, and since to get level, the forms were staked above ground, I ended up with 10"+ in most places.

The odd looking section in the front is for a walk down for access to the basement. We didn't have grade to do a walk out, so this is the next best thing (at extra cost tho). LHBA has a saying. 4 corners = 1 house. 8 corners = 2 houses, and they are absolutely right. Although worth it to us, that small 8x12 footing doubles the number of corners (and therefore rebar bending required) and the time to square and level another section, plus as much cement as one whole other side.

In the center of the footing, you can see a square form going up. This is one of 2 center pads that will support the RPSL's (Ridge Pole Support Logs) that hold up the RP (Ridge pole), aka "big ass log" that holds up the roof. 2 additional bump outs are also being built at each end of the footing to support the 2 end RPSL's.

And here we are, ready to pour. I stapled thin plastic inside and out of the forms to make removing the boards easier, as well as helping the cement retain moisture during the cure, instead of the ground sucking it all up. The steel has also all been placed, I put 2 strands of either 15 or 20m rebar (5/8ths or 3/4 equiv) spaced 8" apart. This is actually gross overkill (10m would have been fine), but I had the material, and it cost me literally n0thing, so I used it. The center pads (also oversized, but what the hey) got 4 strands placed in them.

Pouring day.

I'll admit, I cheated a bit here and called in a pump truck, but after a crazy week of my day job, building the forms in 90 deg weather, plus bailing hay until 9:30 the night before, wheelbarrowing 12 cubic meters (15+ yards) of cement wasn't on the list of fun things to do, plus it would have set up too fast, plus I would have had a hell of a time getting the center pads filled.

I actually don't have many pictures, I was too busy running behind the pump raking the cement and troweling it level.

Concrete pumps are really cool!
7:00am on the dot, he was here.

By 7:20 the first cement truck was on site and by 7:30 we were pouring


2 hours later, they were long gone and I had all the vertical rebar dowels placed (and just in time, because the cement was drying really fast). By this time I was physically destroyed. It took all my butt to climb in the truck and drive home. It's a good thing we started early, because I was already hot and humid by this time.

Ready for the foundation!