Starting the second floor wall and sweat equity

Two weeks after the second floor pour and they've started putting up the ICF form for the second floor walls.  That's a little ahead of the 21 day cure time for the first floor, but I suspect by the time they need to shoot the floors for the wall supports, it will be at 21 days.  The first few courses don't need the bracing so it's good that they're getting started early. Two more days in this month will mark the end of the first week of December, so it's quite possible they might get the walls up in the second week of December.  After that, roof trusses will be measured and ordered.  Before you know it (most likely in the new year depending on holiday shut down and weather) we'll be buttoned up for the winter.

There are two sections of the walls that haven't been installed yet.  The master closet and turret.  The master closet actually partially sits above the garage and a rectangular section of LiteDeck was installed although it will only occupy some of this space.  Since the garage is 45 degrees from the house, only a corner of the master closet will be above the garage.  I think rebar spikes will need to be drilled down into the concrete deck to anchor the wall.  I think spikes will also be needed for the turret, but since it's before the full concrete cure time, they haven't done it yet.

   Here's the location for the master closet.  If you connect the two walls you'll see how just a corner of the house will sit in that platform.  The roof line for the garage runs the length of the middle so the left and right of that concrete pad will be too close to the garage trusses to use.

   Here's the great room again.  Two courses of ICF have been installed around the perimeter of the second floor.  These are the two courses that are below all the windows on the second floor.  The next course will define most window openings.  Looking at this photo now, I see that there should already be openings for the next layer of windows in the great room.  I'll need to get confirmation that they'll remove the sections from these first two courses for all the windows in the great room.  I'm pretty sure that's what they'll do since the master balcony walk out is also filled in, but at least that's marked.

   Here's a shot that we'll never see when the roof trusses go up.  I'm standing on the master closet pad looking at the driveway approach.  We debated putting a window in the master closet, but finally decided against it.  The natural light is probably nice, but we couldn't really see a reason to take up wall space.

   Here's the turret.  If you look closely near the middle, you can see the rebar they used to determine the circumference of the turret.  The other spikes are the ones coming up from the first floor walls and are used to anchor the floor in place.  As you can see, they'll need to drill rebar spikes for the walls.  I can't wait to see how they pull off a curved wall.  The ceiling will be 10' in the turret.  Two feet of wall under seven feet of window with one more foot of wall above the window.  This little turret will be amazing. 

   

   Here's the view from the turret, looking at the "front yard" and driveway approach.  Pretty commanding view.  I think we might want to install a camera in the eave up here to get a good security shot of the driveway.  Those trees will be staying but you can still see quite a bit. 

   Here's another shot that we won't be able to have when the house is completed.  I have the window  wall of the great room to my back and I'm looking down into the room.  There will be a fireplace where the support is in the middle of the frame.  The fireplace structure will continue up to the second floor, where there will be another fire place on the second floor landing.  To the left and right of the fireplace, we'll have a landing balcony to the greatroom.  I hope this won't cause too much trouble with sound transmission from below to the upstairs bedrooms.

   So as a part of the requirement by the city to sign the permits for our landscaping, they required new silt fencing to be placed against the wetland setback around the perimeter of the proposed construction areas. Another requirement is an orange barrier fence to serve as a visual barrier against people or machinery from entering the setback.  The silt fence is installed with a piece of specialized machinery that trenches down while installing the fence.  This was done by Great Oaks.  The orange fence could have also been installed, by them, but I figured it was time for me to put in some sweat equity and save a few thousand on the installation.  I purchased 600' of 4' tall orange fence and 75 5' steel T-posts.  Orange zip-ties hold the fence on the posts.

   I spent about three hours and ended up pounding in just over 60 posts and used all 600' of the fencing.  I think I went through 200 zip ties, using three per post.  The nice thing is that we just need it for inspection and for areas that are undergoing active landscape implementation.  Since we'll only be attacking the driveway this year, I can remove the rest of it and store it for future use.  The zip ties are disposable, but at least I won't be paying someone each time for installation and removal.  In the end, I can probably sell the t-posts on craigslist or something. 

   The orange fence was installed around the entire tip of the peninsula.  Although more silt fence was installed on the driveway approach, orange fence wasn't required in those locations.

   The weather this week looks pretty mild (50's F) so I think some good progress will be made.  I fully expect to see the walls almost all the way prepped next weekend, ready for a pour next week.