Ok I realize now that i need to make smaller updates to the journal because it has a tendency to get left til the last minute and then becomes a monumental task. so from now on its going to be shorter after this last lengthy recap. its been oh ... almost 8 months! jeeez. we actually finished the following stuff in december or 2004 and have been resting all winter. here's what we got done prior to that time which was mainly focused around getting the massive foundation job done. one major thing that we regret doing is not making sure the house pad was totally level. since our house design increased in size since we had the pad cut, the south side ended up being much lower which caused a huge amount of additional work and money to compensate. note to future builders make sure if you are doing a slab your pad is level :)



here is the backhoe helping us to spread the base rock / gravel for underneath the slab. keeps moisture from wicking up the slab into the house. it would have been a massive undertaking to try and move that much gravel by hand. we still had to level it all manually and fill in the gaps. the eps did not hold the base rock back as i had hoped so we ended up pouring the stem walls first which is what we should have planned to do in the first place. but it all worked out best.



Here is a close up shot of the stem wall area where the 5/8" rebar is sitting across some pvc pipe to separate the foam insulation boards. this worked fairly well but again, wasnt able to hold back the base rock as you can see it is bowing out. we used additional vertical rebar every 3 ft which will eventually connect the stem wall to the slab.



Here are the hardy frame panel anchors which need to be setup prior to the pour. we hung the template off of the form board.



This is after the stem wall was poured.



A shot of the whole foundation area with the gravel/base rock in and stem wall poured.



Base Rock leveled!



EPS Insulfoam insulation panels cut and placed over the base rock. Now im going to be honest here, i'm still not sure we used the right stuff for under the slab :) oh well too late now. I was trying to use the more eco-friendly material rather than the pink or blue Dow Chemical insulation foam. The EPS Insulfoam was also less expensive. The reason I am not sure is that this stuff was not that rigid, consisted of beads of foam and my fear is that it will compress or degrade under the concrete. The EPS pounds per sq. inch seemed plenty for the slab but still I am not sure. XPS would have been more rigid and would probably be the safer bet.



Here is the vapor barrier / visqueen underlayment placed over the EPS insulation to keep moisture from making contact with the slab.



4" of Sand on top of the vapor barrier leveled.





Rolls of Reinforcing Mesh to increase the tensile strength of the slab. Rolling this stuff out was a chore!



The mesh was tied using tie-wire to the rebar which was placed horizontally across the interior and exterior stem wall. The mesh was designed to sit 2" below the slab. The concrete finishers preferred to pull up the mesh as they poured rather than place dobies below the mesh. The reasoning being that sometimes stuff gets under the dobies and then when pouring there is no way to push the mesh down below the slab surface. I think it worked out quite well. We were able to consistently pull up the mesh to the approximate level as we poured.



All rebar and remesh installed.



Here is the underslab monifold we setup which holds the hydronic radiant floor pex tubing in place. The manifold is located where the utility room will be in order to connect to the Boiler. We ran pex loops connected to the re-mech using zip ties and placed the pex 12" apart. This was really quite fun and was finished in 2 days. The pex uncoiler we rented really saved us a lot of time.





All the pex installed.



The pour. It was a great day just having the pour happen and having all our hard work pay off.



We wet-set the anchor bolts for the sill plate based on measurements we pre-marked on the form boards. Looking back, I would have been more accurate with the height of each bolt to make installing the sill plate easier. Wet-setting was much easier than having to come up with some method of holding the bolts in place during the pour.



Power float



Finishing



The final slab in all its glory! Ok so currently we are working on the porch slab and courtyard post bases. Trying to get all that done so we can start working on the framing. The plan is to get the framing and the roof completed before october so we can put the bales in.