Making way for the house

Land clearing began some time around August 27th.  If I recall correctly, the week before, we made it out there and the framer and his small crew were taking down trees.  It's unfortunate that some of the larger trees needed to come down, but we were able to keep a large oak in the middle of what will be the back yard.  We're also not going to touch the rest of the 6 acres of trees.

Just some of the trees removed

Our next weeks visit provided us with an excavated footprint and Form-a-drain footings.

Aerial shot.

If you don't know what the procedure, The footings are what the rest of the house walls sit on.  These are about two and a half feet across.  Typically, wood would be used as a concrete form, rebar is placed in the excavated cavity, and concrete is poured and leveled.  Afterwards, the wood forms are removed, the footings are spiked with rebar to which the walls are anchored.  We're using form-a-drain, which consists of a rectangular PVC channel that is used as the concrete form, but stays in place to act as the drain tile.  One side of the Form-a-drain is perforated so that water attempting to infiltrate the foundation will instead drain away in the product.

Below grade footings.

As you can see, only half the foundation will be using the form-a-drain.  This is because half of the house will be at a lower elevation.  The lower elevations will be the basement wall, with two walk out doorways and four windows.  For these footings, rebar is still used, but I'm told the foundation will be a "frost free footing".  As it was described to me, expanded polystyrene foam will be used as a form.  After the footings are poured, the ground outside the footprint of the house will be excavated.  Gravel will be placed for drainage and a horizontal slab of foam will be placed before back filling to grade.  This will keep the ground heat "in" and prevent frost from freezing down to the concrete.

Here you can see the height differential between the first floor grade and the basement grade.  It will actually be more than the excavated earth shown here since we're going with a 10 foot basement.