Ready For Concrete

I like to include a picture of our house in the air for those who can't imagine living in a house supported by four big Jenga games. I hope someone doesn't decide to try to play one of the games.
They have everything ready to pour concrete. They finished getting everything ready on Friday, but the people who do the inspections don't work on Fridays. The current plan is to request an inspection on Monday, get inspected on Tuesday, and pour concrete on Wednesday.
You can see little blue fixtures. They hold a bolt that sits in the concrete with a threaded end exposed. The threaded end is used to attach the wall to the foundation.
You can see our yard is turned into a bog. The mud tries to pull your shoes off with every step.
One side of the house has forms that are a lot higher than they need. On that side the bolts with the exposed thread are attached to wood blocks that are attached to the side of the form.

Almost Ready

They have continued working on the forms and re-bar and they are almost ready to pour concrete.

The Saga Continues

They are still working on putting in the foundation forms. You can see they are making progress.


Here are more of the forms they still need to put in.
This is the floor plan of our "walk space" (it is a crawl space that you can walk through). You can see all the footings that need to be poured. The pads for columns need to be connected to the rest of the footings.

More footing work

Work continues on getting things ready to pour the concrete for our new footings. The weather has cooperated for past couple of days.

More work on footings

There is a lot of work involved in building footing forms and getting the re-bar in the right location. They are continuing to make progress.

A new toilet

They continued putting in forms for the footing today. It is good to see progress every day.

They also redid our plumbing today. They got rid of the old leaky cast iron and concrete pipes. They are going to need to redo our plumbing at least one more time when we get our new septic system. That will be at the end of this project.
I guess the contractor felt bad about us temporarily losing one of our toilets because the house movers put a beam under it. Our contractor brought us a new toilet. It might be inconvenient to use especially in the middle of the night. I guess we could let the workers use it too.
The workers are using one of our outside plug for their tools. Their extension cords have lights on the end to make it easier to find. Now we have little lights under our house.

Started work on the footing

They started putting in the forms and the re-bar for our new footing today. We can start to see the layout of the walls of our new ground floor.

Getting ready for new foundation

They delivered material to make our new foundation. The re-bar is under the plastic in front of our dirt pile. The lumber is in our old driveway.

You can see the lumber and our two dirt piles in this picture. One is in the front yard (behind the car) and the other is in the back yard. I still think it is strange to see our back yard from the front of our house.
Our contractor said they will build the forms and put in the re-bar for our new foundation next week. He hopes to get the inspection at the end of the week and pour the concrete the next week.
A plumber will fix our drain problem early next week.
Most of the dirt from our piles will eventually be put back under our house to get it level with the ground outside the house. The mud in our yard is really sticky. It only comes off your shoes after you sweep the floor or get to work.
You can hear anyone coming to the front door long before they get there.

Problems

Early Monday morning we were woke up by workers fixing a broken water main on our street. We didn't get our water reconnected until after I went to work.
Monday they didn't do any work on our house. Tuesday they dug more dirt out. The piles of dirt are getting bigger.


The sewage pipes going into our septic system are leaking now that the dirt around them has been removed. We are getting our septic system replaced after we are back down on our new foundation.

How Firm a Foundation -- NOT

We are no longer have a foundation under our house. They added tubes to the end of our down spouts to get the water to run away from the house. They are trying to get it to be less muddy under the house.



They are digging down to undisturbed soil to pour our new foundation.



We have two piles of dirt in our yard. They are covered with plastic to keep them clean.

The house next door has been sold. We need to stop using their yard.

We can see Mount Si, a local landmark, from a couple of our windows now. Our view was blocked by trees when we were lower.

A lesson from George Washington

In honor of Washington's birthday, which is later this month, our contractor cut down our cherry tree. We knew we would lose the tree, we just didn't know when. They also removed the rest of our foundation.

They started digging a trench to put in the new footings.

We have noticed that our house moves in the wind.

Plumb bob

They removed one of the two remaining sections of foundation and hauled a lot of the old foundation away. When I was looking under the house I saw something to remind me of my surveying days. It was a plumb bob hanging from a beam. I think it is to line up the new foundation with the house.

More foundation removed

They removed more of our foundation today. There is just a little of the old foundation left. They also filled in trenches and holes in the yard. There is not any grass left near the house. The space under our house is currently being used as a garage. I thought we would park our cars in the garage, nor construction equipment.

Who Needs Water?

They started removing our old foundation today. The portion they removed was the old porch, and the front wall under the living room and master bedroom. That wall is where the water line enters the house. They broke the water line.

This where they removed the foundation. You can see the old water line. It has seen better days. I think those days were before I was born.
You can see the new main water line. It is the shiny black pipe connected to the color coded pipes in the house (blue for cold water).
The new water line goes over a log and connects to the water meter.

They will bury the line later. They did reconnect our water.