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.

Fast Forward

A lot has happened since the last post and things are rolling now.  It's almost the end of the year, one year after we first broached the subject of building our own house.  Here's the recap of the past 9 months.

After many delays, we finally got the final design from the architect completed.  Some of the delays were additions we wanted, but most of them were due to an over worked architect.

We met with a surveyor from Alpine Engineering and staked out the envelope of the house.  It was interesting because we had just enough room to have some freedom to place the house.  Since we wanted a better view out the great-room windows, we moved the house forward 8 ft. and rotated it 5 degrees.  This meant that the house would take out some of the largest pines on the lot, but we're not short on trees for this build.

Next, the excavator and his crew cleared the lot of trees.  This process took a couple of weeks since there was a malfunction with the excavators trailer.  After the lot was cleared, the house was re-staked so the basement could be excavated.

Footing trenches were then dug and forms were placed for the foundation walls.  A product called "Form-a-drain" was used on the below grade footings.  Usually when a concrete form is poured, wood is used to form a mold, the concrete is poured, then the wood is taken away.  With the Form-a-drain, the forms are made of thick plastic rectangular channels with drain slots on one side.  These forms stay in place after the concrete pour, and double as the drain tile.  For the areas of the footing that are at grade (walk out) a trench is poured 24" deep and thick foam is used as the form.  The outside dirt is pulled away and replaced with pea gravel.  This pea gravel will act as the drain tile.  Next, a layer of rigid foam is laid down on the exterior of the housing footprint then back filled over. This creates a "frostless footing".  The foam will act as an insulator, retaining the ground heat and keeping the surface temperatures from freezing the ground.

I'm told that the footings have been poured and spiked, and three courses of ICF block have been laid.  I'll get some pictures and post more.... I promise.