Steel

The beams for the first floor are on site now.  Beam pockets have already been formed or cut in the basement walls and the structure calls for three beams to support the ICF floor. These beams need to be in place before the ICF subfloor can be setup.

Here's where they deposited four of the beams. I think these are going to be used for the first floor supports.  There's one span that holds up the rotunda and stairs, so that will probably need to be welded together.  Still a pretty mild winter so far.

Numbers written on the beams.  The framer says that once they're in place, they'll be coated to prevent further oxidation.

Some of the plates that will be welded to the posts and beams.  Bolts are driven down into the concrete footers so the posts don't shift.  The tops of the posts will be welded to the beams.

 Two more beams and two diameters of posts.  Steel beams will also be used to support the wrap around porch.  The thicker diameter posts are used inside the house, the thinner diameter posts are used to support the porch on the side of the house.

Here you can see the concrete footings for the side porch posts.  Once completed, the side porch will be about 10ft off the ground, overlooking the forest and the "front" yard.  It will be an awesome place to sit and enjoy a nice spring rain.

Beam in place.  This beam goes from the elevator shaft to the back of the house, sitting somewhere between the kitchen and mudroom.

This is how the beam sits in the pocket.  Rebar will be drilled down to peg the beam in place.  I'm pretty sure concrete will be poured to trap the beam.

Beam span under the kitchen.

Ground level shot of the beam.  You can see the pocket for the next beam on the left of the elevator shaft.  The third beam will span across the visible footings in the middle of the picture.

Just a little grading and fill dirt.

Still under a little bit of a slow down on the construction front.  Winter is a little mild this year so far in terms of snow fall, but temperatures are a little inhibiting for pouring flat concrete.  The walls are more or less okay to pour since the concrete curing process is exothermic.  You just need to protect the top of the walls from freezing, since you don't want the water in the concrete to crystallize.  It causes the concrete to powder and you end up with a weakened concrete matrix.

We paid out of pocket a bit and got some fill dirt laid out so that building will be a little easier.  Our fill budget was broken since we moved the house location a bit forward and went with a 10ft deep basement.  This means that the house was out of the ground more and less was excavated.

 Back porch and gazebo, with the walkout on the left.  We'll probably have to re-excavate this area since we're thinking about cutting and installing some doors to the area underneath the back porch.  This area will be tricky to landscape since there's a walkout just off the frame to the right and the backyard grade is at the height seen at the left.

 A few from the rear walk out up to the back yard.  You can see the gazebo and where the concrete pad for the outdoor fireplace will be.  We'll probably need to terrace this and have steps or something.

A view from the tip of the peninsula at water level.  You can't see the house yet, but I imagine when the first and second floors are added, you'll have no problem seeing it.  We're estimating that the house will be really, really tall since we're having 9ft ceilings on each floor plus the thickness of the ICF floor.  Combine that with a high roof line, and this house will look tall.

View from the peninsula just before the grade change down to the lake.  This is basically a shot of the back yard.  Future plans include a pool where the logs are on the right of the frame.  Amazing there isn't much snow yet.

LiteDeck

So after a discussion with my builder about the *currently* limited availability of the steel trusses we were going to use for the floors, we've decided to use an ICF floor system called LiteDeck.

Specifically, we'll be using the WRS or wood rib system.  LiteDeck produces two systems, one with an integrated metal "C" rib insert, and one in which you provide the 2x6 to be used as bracing for setting up the floor.

 Some of the stacks of the LiteDeck.

 Here you can see how they will mesh together.  The narrow slots are for the 2x6 that will be used to provide bracing before the concrete is poured.  The 2x6s can be removed after the concrete is set, or kept in place.  We'll be keeping them in place to act as nailers for the ceiling underneath.

The 6" deep channel will hold 2 thick pieces of rebar that run the length of the install.  These are held off the bottom of the channel by small plastic spacers.  A rebar grid is laid on top of the decking after it's all installed and concrete is poured into all the channels and up to the thickness of the floor.  When cured, the channels act as concrete beams, supporting the weigh of the floor.  My father in law couldn't comprehend where the strength of the floor is derived from so I told him to look at a parking garage and show me where the steel I-beams are.

 More LiteDeck stacked on the side of the house.

Garage footings

Trenches for the garage footings have been dug.

 The garage will house three cars with two doors.  This is the 2-door section of the garage and is deeper than the single car area.

 Here's the single car area.  You can see the front goes in so it's not as deep.  There will also be a garage door on the back of the house since there isn't much room on the sides of the house in case we need to get something large back there.

 Another shot of how the garage narrows.  I'm not sure how the garage will be constructed considering the final grade will need to come up a foot.  I believe the top of the ICF block shown in this picture is at final grade.

Here's the whole trench.  You can see the back wall trench too and the rebar that will be set in the foundation.

Baby Steps

October is coming to a close and construction has slowed down a bit.  Looks like there has been some grading done, but we'll need to truck in a lot more sand to bring it to final grade.

Here's a shot of the front of the house.  The brick ledge is where the final grade will have to be so we're looking at 2-3 ft of fill.

The back porch and gazebo foundation walls have been placed and poured.  If you can recall, this was not originally part of the plan.  The deck and gazebo were supposed to be supported by pylons, but the builder thought it would be easier to do it this way.  Also it gives us a lot of unconditioned storage space underneath.

 I think the brick ledge is where the posts supporting the roof will be.

 Here's a shot of some of the space under the deck and gazebo.  There's a lot of concrete spill over, but even if that's leveled out, you're still looking at 7' of height.  The left is the gazebo and the foundation goes up a bit, so excavated and leveled we're looking at 5' of space.  The deck continues to the right.

 Here's what the gazebo looks like from the back yard.  You can see the basement walkout on the left.

 Grading around the basement walkout with the gazebo and deck on the right.

Standing where the garage will be.  The wall in the center is where the garage entrance to the house will be.  Back deck and gazebo can be seen on the right.  The front of the house is on the left.

Small changes

Mid October rolled around and we got another chance to take a trip to the job site.  The basement walls were probably still hardening on the inside, which is fine because my builder told me that he's having trouble procuring the steel for the floor joists.  Since we're going to have concrete floors throughout the house, Wood joists are replaced with steel floor trusses, over which a corrugated sheet metal is placed.  The concrete is then poured over this and leveled.  He said that orders for the steel is months out, so he secured a distributor for an ICF floor system.  I'll provide more detail about that later.  On to the pictures.

 Here's the foundation wall for the end of the garage.  There are some marks on the back of the wall which denotes where the final grade is expected to be.  It seems like the top of this wall will be just about where the garage floor will be.  There will be a window in that alcove so even the garage will have a great view.

 All this needs to be backfilled then under the garage slab will have the normal gravel/rock.  This will be the single car door section of the garage, so it's not as deep as the two car section.  This section will also have a single space garage door on the back of the house so we can get large items to the back yard since there's so little room on the sides.

 Here's another shot of the gazebo.  It's hard to tell by the picture, but it's 20' across.  I'm hoping there will be enough room for a few seats around the fire and an 8 person table.

 Forms for the footings are removed and some of the wall supports are taken away.  I think the basement floor will be just above, or at, the footing level.  Counting the ICF block levels confirms that it will be 10ft to the ceiling.

Just another shot of the basement and elevator shaft.

Basement walls at full height and poured

This visit on a crisp fall day brought some nice surprises.  Driving up to the house, we could already see that the next floors rebar spikes were set into the tops of the basement walls, so that meant that the walls have been poured.

Here's a shot of the front of the house and garage wall.  The rebar spikes are pretty evident.  Those will be the tie in for the first floor walls.  Notice the double layer visqueen sheeting?  Apparently that's code for waterproofing.  The top is attached to the wall with a piece of wood and sprayfoamed water tight.  The sheeting drapes down the wall without mechanical fastening and is "secured" at the bottom with pea gravel, up against the drain footing.  It's not what I would have wanted, but considering we're in sand, and all of the below grade walls will at least have an 8 foot porch covering it, I guess it's okay.  I really hope I'm not kicking myself in the ass for this decision.

 Here's a beam pocket.  A standard steel I-beam will be set in place to support the first floor.

 Window cavity filled.  I'm not sure if the window will sit right on this or if another piece of wood will space it.

 Footings for support posts bridging the basement stairs.  The background has the only two other post footings in the house.  All posts will be hidden in walls.  The ICF wall supports will remain until the concrete cures.

 Here's how the misplaced wall was fixed.  Shouldn't be a problem at all.

 Here's some excavation for the gazebo and rear porch.  On the blueprints, the rear porch is supported by footings, posts, and an engineered header.  The framer and builder decided that it would be better to pour a trench footing and use ICF for the entire back porch and gazebo.  This will give us the opportunity to have some outdoor uncondition storage space under it.  I'm even thinking that the area under the gazebo could house the pool pump/filter/heater in the future since the back deck will be concrete.

 Two footings for the garage walls.

 Looks like the end of the garage wall will also have a deeper footing due to the change in elevation.

Wrapping up the basement before the pour

One more week and it looks like the basement is ready to pour.  All the block has been finalized and some waterproofing material has been attached to the walls that will be below grade.  It looks like it's just some polyvinyl sheeting with pea gravel for drainage around the form-a-drain.  I'll have to talk to the builder to get that changed.  Ideally, I would have either a peel and stick with dimpled plastic sheeting or a Styrofoam safe spray with another kind of mechanical protection.  Some updated build pictures.

Here's a shot of what's going on inside the walls.  Here you see the plastic webbing that holds the two outer foam pieces together and cradles the horizontal rebar.  The webbings snap to each other vertically, holding each course together.  

Shot of the front of the house, basement level.  The outcropping is a storage room that will be under the front porch.  The front door will be above this room.  You can see the brick ledge course.  The short wall is a foundation for the garage.

Front left corner of the house, basement level.  This will be a glass block window, illuminating the mechanical rooms.  This is where all the utilities will enter the house as well.

 Side basement walkout.  Not much to say.  It's a slider walk out.  You can see the forms for the porch pylons.  There will be an 8 foot porch here that wraps from the front of the house to the back.

Detail of the cut-outs in the window bucks for pouring cement.

 Here's the brick ledge and how the rebar is cradled in the foam block.  It's also tied into the wall rebar.

Rear right of the house.  The ground will slope up (somehow) from the rear basement walkout up to another 8 foot porch/gazebo.  The basement wall on the left of the picture will be below grade.  The openings in the wall on the right are two windows and the rear basement walkout.  The greatroom will be situated above this room and will be two storeys.

Fixed and ready to pour

The solution to the misplaced wall was to remove take down the Integra-spec, remove the outside of the Form-a-drain, route new Form-a-drain to the correct dimensions, and lay rebar in the footing.  

 Here you can see the incorrect footing with one side of the Form-a-Drain removed.  Also visible is the rebar where the new footing will be poured, and some supporting structure to stabilize the ICF wall.  The footing and wall will be poured at one time, making a very strong structure.  This corner of the house will have an extra wide footing too so if I have any really heavy equipment, I can put it here.

 Here's the corrected corner from the outside.  The short wall is the footing for the rear garage wall.

Here's the length of the wall.  Sometimes the blocks don't line up quite right because they're a standard length, which doesn't match the wall.  They use metal strapping to hold the seams together for the pour.  Any gaps will be filled with spray foam.

The offending corner is fixed and the future basement walls will be correct.  Here you can see the ICF elevator shaft that will extend from the basement to the second floor.  Also visible is the lattice system inside the wall and some of the supporting rebar.



In the end, I'm glad the mistake was recognized before the cement was poured.  If it had to be corrected afterwards, it would have cost much more time and money.

Rear walkout

Rear walkout