Our house construction is also coming along. We now have what looks like a house! There have been some major changes in the last couple of months. Let's go back...
August 30: We have a cleared spot for our house, and smoldering brush piles. These took all day for the flames to die down, and Neal came home with a fire tan. It rained for a few days after that, and the piles were still hot! Later we discovered that the clay that was stuck on the tree roots had baked into a brick and was probably protecting the heat underneath. A little science for ya.
Shortly after this, Neal went out and surveyed again, staking the corners of the house so the foundation people had something to go by. It was really neat being able to see where the house would go, and visualize where the different rooms were!
After a week or so of phone calls, the foundation team finally came! They had one guy with a backhoe driving around and moving dirt, and later another came and drove a compactor over it so the foundation would be more dense. Don't want anything to shift under your house!
They added several layers of select fill dirt, 25 dump truck loads to be exact! The slab design company tested the density of the slab at every layer, but it failed the tests after 2 layers. Mild panic set in as the foundation contractor, our builder, the slab designer, and Neal scrambled to figure out what went wrong. They couldn't replace all of that dirt! Finally the builder noticed a small detail that had gone overlooked: the location that they got the fill dirt from was not the same location that the tests were based on! Like comparing apples and oranges. Once they sampled and tested the correct fill dirt source, the dirt that was placed for our foundation passed the tests. Whew! What a relief!
Now they could begin placing the corners of the slab.
Once the corners were in place, the shafts for the piers were drilled. I think we have 48 total!
Then the steel rebar cages were placed in the shafts, and concrete poured. They had to use a pump truck to reach all the areas of the slab.
Here is the slab area with the concrete poured in the piers and the steel rebar sticking out. It will be cut later.
This will be continued in the next post: A Slab for a Birthday Gift.
