Foundation poured

A few pictures after the foundation was poured. Yes, that is snow dusting the ground on the left.


We poured the foundation on Dec 15th , after a week delay for weather. The Seattle area was hit with a cold snap when the temperature didn't get above freezing for 10 days; we couldn't pour the concrete in sub-freezing weather. The bright spot however was that the prolonged cold snap froze the roadbed, so when the concrete trucks did come up for the pour they did minimal damage to our dirt road! The grand total for the pour was 8 truckloads of concrete, for a grand total of 320,000 pounds of concrete.

Here it is, the foundation, waiting for the dirt to be filled back in around the walls. This picture is from the northeast corner, looking at what will eventually be our front door. The forms have been taken off much of the wall, but you can still see some on the left side of the picture.

This photo is inside the basement of the west wing of the house (on the original plans, this was to be a 4' deep crawl space, but the slope of the hill was more than we expected). The forms are off the wall, and you can see the cutout for door into the central part of the basement, and a window facing south from the basement.

Foundation pouring

We poured the foundation yesterday (12/15)! This is a picture of the concrete crew; their names are Jose, Jose, and Jose (really!) They are waiting for the next concrete truck to arrive with its load of concrete. This is a view of the 'west wing" of the basement (originally planned to be a crawl space, but the slope of the hill gave us a 12' deep basement). To pour the foundation, the forms had to be built up 12', with a scaffolding built up around the top for the guys to pour the concrete.

In this photo, Mark G and "Jose 1.5" are pouring concrete (pumped through the black pipe, and into the form) into the wall between the center part of the basement and the west wing; they are 12 feet above the ground, on forms and scaffolding. There are also 2 guys on the ground helping guide the concrete pipe (they happened to be named Jose, also), that is pumping concrete up the hill from the landing (a 16% grade that the trucks can't make).

Mark G, in the foreground, is placing bolts or screws that will eventually hold the house down onto the foundation. In the background is the guy who owns the concrete pump that we used to get all the concrete into the forms. All total, we needed 8 loads of concrete, each with 10 yards of concrete, each weighing 4,000 pound....that totaled up to 160 tons of concrete for the foundation....

This is a view of the north side of the house, facing toward what will eventually be the driveway. You can see the concrete leaking out between the forms. We fortunately never had a "blow-out" in the wall, however did have a blow-out in the base that will be under the masonry heater, which was quickly patched and refilled. If we had to have a blow=out, that was the best place to have it.

We were fortunate in weather: we had hoped to pour the foundation a week ago, but got put off because the weather was below freezing for over a week. As soon as the weather warmed up over freezing, we poured. As it turned out, having a deep freeze for 10 days before the Big Pour made the road up to the property very firm and frozen, and having big heavy concrete trucks on the road did much less damage than if the weather had been muddy.

Here you can see the concrete in the forms, and the bolts that will hold the house down. The tons of concrete we just poured should hold the house onto the hill, now we just have to be sure the wind doesn't blow the house away (that is the basis of the engineering for the building). The foundation guys let the concrete cure for a full day after pouring, and will start taking down the forms tomorrow
You should see it in person, it's amazing to look at!

Working in sub-freezing temps

The camera is standing at the east end of the house, looking over the forms in place, ready for the concrete to be poured for the foundation. Notice, however, that there is snow on the ground: that is snow that fell 4 days ago, and the temperature has been below freezing ever since, which is too cold to pour concrete. The current cold snap is supposed to continue all this week, so we can't pour concrete this week, and are hoping to pour the concrete early next week.

This is a view inside the west end of the basement, looking at the forms. Jeff is on the ladder attaching wires to the rebar. Each of the panels is 2 feet high, so the wall we're looking at is 12 feet tall. Since that exceeds the height maximum for concrete walls, we will actually need to put in 3 feet of dirt fill on the floor of the basement before we pour the slab (floor) so the wall will only be 9 feet high, which still makes an awesome basement. Note the snow on the ground.

James is standing in the doorway into the basement, at the western wall of the house. Note the very warm jacket and hat and gloves, which weren't warm enough. But in the Pacific NW, when you are in the construction business, most of the year is adverse weather conditions, so you need to handle cold, and rain, and....

Starting the foundation

After pouring the footings, now we get to start on the foundation. This is Jeff, one of the two brothers doing our foundation, starting to build up the forms to pour the foundation. He is standing under what will be the dining room. Notice we're no longer wearing T-shirts to work in; the ambient temperature for the last week has been low-40's. And yes that is standing water inside the footings (just a few inches).

The other brother, Mark, is putting twist ties on the rebar crosspieces, a few feet down from where Jeff was standing in the other picture. There is a huge amount of metal going in to that foundation, clearly.

We will talk to the engineer tomorrow when he gets back from hunting, about the west end of the basement. Because of the slope of the hill, the foundation wall may need to be 11 or 12 feet tall at that end of the basement, and we will need to work out whether it is all concrete or framed wall.

In local weather news, there is already 3 feet of snow in the mountains above 4.000 feet elevation and Crystal Mountain ski area opened for the season 5 days ago. Here's hoping the snow doesn't get down to 1500 feet for awhile!

The footings are poured

We poured the footings (the cement at the bottom of the foundation) on Wed (11/4/09)! Now that the footings are poured, there's no stopping us now!
This is a corner of the footing in the basement for the masonry heater, that I carved the date and put my handprint on. Too bad the kids were in school and couldn't put their hands on as well. I'm told this will be visible in the basement.

Here is the cement truck, from our neighbor Walt Miles (Miles Sand and Gravel). We poured 4 truckloads of cement today, 10 cubic yards per truck, you do the calculations, but it's a lot of concrete, all of which was pumped uphill by the pumper-guy (white pick-up at the left, with pipes heading uphill). The guy who held the other end of the pipe was a very strong kid.

This is the footing for the east wing of the house, which will have a 3' crawl space under the house. The center part of the house has a full basement, you can see the forms at the right side of this photo.

This is a photo of the garage footings; the guys were taking off the forms already, a mere 6 hours after pouring the cement, and it had already hardened! The ambient temperature was around mid-50's, but the cement was already so hard they could pound on it with hammers. Amazing stuff!

I am so happy we have the footings poured. Now the weather won't affect us as much, now that the footings are in!

Mud Butt

We have been keeping our fingers crossed that the weather would hold and not get too wet too soon. After a very dry summer and September, we started getting a little rain off and on about 2 weeks ago, turning the homesite into a much muddier place. We have piles and piles of dirt and topsoil stored under plastic sheets trying to keep them from washing away.
This is a picture of what happened to Becky's backside today while visiting the site after yesterday's rainfall (thus the title Mud Butt). The next picture is the front view (note the muddy left hand - the blaze orange is because it is hunting season and James thought my brown coat might be mistaken for wildlife):

I was next to the home site taking pictures, and stepped into mud that turned out to be nearly quicksand (while holding a phone in one hand and the camera in the other, so I figured when I needed a 3 point landing my seat was the best option!) James didn't warn me how bad the mud was...

This is the main part of the (future) basement, waiting for the inspector before pouring the footings (ie the base of the concrete walls); after the footings are poured we get another inspection before the walls are poured (and of course the County gets paid every time they come out for an inspection..) As you can see, it started raining 2 weeks ago and the basement is not nearly as dry as it used to be. It turns out there is actually a small spring in the NE corner of the house (a dry spot in the basement that started getting wet before the rain started; it's located under the future laundry room, how fitting!)

I convinced Patrick to climb down into the "basement", so I could use him as a foreground prop for pictures. The wall behind him is the same wall that I posted a picture of Katie in front of (the picture she had a red bathrobe on). It's starting to look a little different.

The short stretch of driveway from the logging road (the landing) to the homesite measures 16% grade, it turns out, which is too steep for many vehicles. Our Jeep has made it up; the concrete truck can't, so will park on the landing and pump the concrete up the last stretch. We will have to figure out something before we need more trucks coming (like the lumber delivery, the roofer, delivering the bathtub and bathroom fixtures, eventually the piano..)

Changes

In the midst of all the work we are doing, the changing of the seasons keeps moving on. We can't hold a candle to New England, but I look forward to seeing these color changes from our porch!

In the "changes" theme, it is starting to feel like that old David Bowie number... when we dug the basement, first we moved it 5 feet north because of the septic field encroaching on the home site, then the foundation guys recommended we move it back a few feet... remember the picture of the tree stump at the corner of my bedroom? It might be a few feet off....
This is a photo of the footings for our basement. The first step will be to pour the footings (ie the first layer), then wait for the inspection, then pour the walls of the basement. This is, after all, earthquake county, so the foundation has to accomodate future earthquakes.

Lest we think that this is all work and no play, here is a picture of James and the kids clowning around. Notice the log Patrick is standing on: this was supposed to fall elsewhere, but given the broad empty space (nature abhors a vacuum, you know), it of course had to fall where James didn't want it too...

King of the Mountain!

OK, so this is my attempt at an artsy photo of the local foliage. It was positively beautiful with blue sky earlier in the afternoon, but I thought this intensity of red still deserved some attention!

James was finishing the dirt work for the foundation this weekend. This is a picture of Katie walking between some of the dirt piles; the house/basement is to her left, and there is a huge mountain of fill dirt to her right. I can only imagine what this will look like once it starts raining; we have been SO blessed with dry weather lately. The piles of dirt are huge, at least 20-30 feet high. James had 2 friends helping today (Dave and Richard), who were SO helpful hiking up and down the dirt piles and laying down plastic. Most of what James has been trying to do this weekend is to lower the garage to the same level as the house (as of Friday the garage was at least 5 feet higher than the front porch). We would love to offer "free fill dirt", but we don't know how much we will need on site. I guess we'll have some big mud piles.

Tomorrow, Monday, was supposed to be the day we started pouring the foundation, however, the rental excavator (see photo above) broke its track (which means it is so broken that no vehicles can get past it, up to the homesite, to do any work), so the foundation guys can't get up there, since there is a piece of broken machinery in the way. We'll keep you posted...

Basement is almost dug

To get ready for the heavy construction trucks (such as the concrete truck to pour the foundation), we have to lay down a road, or at least some gravel, so the trucks don't founder in the dirt and mud. The foreground of this picture is the logging landing, which was laid 2 years ago and can support heavy machinery. The driveway goes up to the left to the home site, and until now was just a swath cut in the dirt. We had a load of rock delivered to cover the driveway (leading up hill to the left of the photo), but the delivery truck couldn't get up the hill to dump the rock, so dumped it at the foot of the hill where we get to spread it up, using the excavator.

In the foreground on the left is a stack of beams for the house, cut from our own trees. Greg (of Greg's Mobile Saw Mill, father of Gregory who ran the mobile mill, see previous posts) was up today to grade the wood. (By code, we can't use ungraded wood to build the house). Grading is based on number of knots, how dense the rings are, and how straight the timbers are. All the wood in the pile received either top or near top grade, more than adequate quality to use for the house. We are so proud to use wood from our own land to build the house.

Friday 10/09/09 after work: James and Weldon have almost finished digging out the foundation. The picture above is the east end of the foundation, where there is a crawl space under those rooms; James is walking around the edge, to give you a sense of scale. On the right is the drop-off to the full basement under the center part of the house (I posted a picture last week of the kids in front of that basement wall, as it was being dug). The weather has blessedly been sunny and we're keeping our fingers crossed for a little more dry weather. Once it starts raining this construction site will get a lot muddier! We expect the foundation crew to be up Monday to start putting up forms.

Digging the basement

Today and yesterday (the weekend), James hired a fellow who is quite expert at excavating, to help dig the basement. Weldon is his name. The guy is amazing; at the speed he digs, rotates the excavater to dump the dirt, and rotates back for the next shovel-full, I'm amazed he isn't dizzy (reminds me of the spinny rides at the fair last month!). James will be cleaning up the mess for the next 2 days.

This is a picture of Katie (wearing a bathrobe for warmth, it is 60 degrees out on this fine Northwest fall day) standing in the future basement, pointing to the east wall. It's a pretty amazing piece of excavating. You can see the scrapes from the excavator behind her, it's very hard stuff.

It's official!

We are now officially a construction site: we have a Porta-potty. Since we will have other construction persons on site as of Monday (ie other than James, who apparently didn't need facilities), we needed "facilities". I guess James was fine with the trees. We had some interesting contests about who would be the first to christen the Portapotty (no names, they will remain anonymous...)

The last tree on the home site, the one with the orange tape around it, came down today: the tree at the SW corner of the house was dropped; the stump is in the photo at the top above. That tree has been marked for over a year. This truly is a landmark event!

We had some "house guests" this afternoon: Colleen with daughter Carol and son Chase came by to drop Patrick and Katie off. They live on property also (farm land, mostly), and Chase (age 3) is a HUGE fan of tractors and all things John Deere. Imagine his excitement seeing the excavator!

Re-marking the house

Here are Katie and Patrick in the (broken) excavator last weekend while we were waiting for the repair. What an amazing boy-toy for James (also an incredibly destructive piece of equipment). The rental company finally brought a replacement equipment for us yesterday.

See our last post, when Patrick and Becky staked out the boundaries of the house. When we all went back the following day (with a better compass), we realized that the hemlock tree that seemed to be in the middle of the garage was actually BEHIND the garage (although it still needed to get come down). The settings were actually only a few feet off... but we had a huge slash pile that was right over the front porch, which made it tough to mark the corners of the house (I wish I had a picture of Patrick teetering on top of a 15' slash pile trying to "move over 2 feet" to line up with the compass settings and mark the corner).

James and Becky met with our building consultant (Dan Rayburn, of U-Build-It franchise) yesterday to review the progress. His first comment about the site was something along the line of "you guys have a LOT of dense growth (biomass/trees/undergrowth - I forget the exact words he used)". He made some suggestions on where to pile the debris so it would be out of the way, in preparation for DIGGING THE FOUNDATION and starting the building process! Yippee!

Keep your fingers crossed that our Indian Summer holds for a little longer so we can do some digging before the hillside turns into a muddy mess.

Marking the house

The photo above shows where our property is. The ridge is called Mt Baldy, as seen from the west (looking east out of town). There are 3 high spots on the ridge, each at about 1500' elevation; the high point on the left of the ridge is about where our parcel is (it is actually about the same elevation as the high point on the right, just further away). This photo is taken from a corner I will drive through every day going home from work.

Today we (Becky Patrick and Katie) went out and staked out the corners of the house and garage in the clearing that James has been clearing out. (James was elsewhere, helping to teach a logging course, a subject he is becoming skilled at!) We discovered that a huge slash pile of debris and branches is centered on our future front hall, and the location for the garage hasn't been cleared far enough, so there is a huge hemlock tree standing in the middle of the future garage. We also discovered we haven't cleared far enough to the south, so our future deck is still covered with trees. It was lots of fun, however, marking out boundaries and imagining "here is our future porch" and "here is where the kitchen will be". We had both dogs with us (Tobi and Keeper), who both appropriately christened the home site, as dogs are wont to do.

Solar kiln

OK, 2 posts in one night, that's over-productive..

This is a photo of a solar kiln. All the wood was cut by Gregory (see earlier post), and carried to this spot and stacked with small spacers between each layer, and plastic mounted over the top to catch solar energy. The top is oriented to the south, and James tells me the wood has already measurably dried since being stacked. This is some of the wood that will be used to frame the house.

Broken excavator

We have a reprieve: James rented the excavator for 4 weeks, and with 3 days left on the clock, the excavator broke. (James didn't break it, a valve cracked, spewing engine fluids and mandating a work stop). So the rental company took it away and will bring a fixed one next week, but in the meantime that means this weekend we can't (ie don't have to) spend all our time clearing land. Which is a good thing, as James is helping teach a logging course tomorrow (how to use logging arches and low-impact equipment to harvest trees without raping the land) for the Northwest Natural Resources Group (which helps foster green logging...).

The photo above shows the tree at the SW boundary of the house (which is the master bedroom). James tells me that's the only tree left standing (I'll see it tomorrow when I go to the site). I carried this picture on my camera so I could show it to friends and say, "See, this is my future bedroom!". What a view, eh?

The neat story about this particular tree is that 2 years ago, in December, Patrick's Boy Scout troop did a Survival overnight on our property and spent the night in the open without tents or overnight equipment. That tree, with the orange tape around it, was the center of their "camp", where they set up a cooking fire (and roasted strips of "deer" meat, actually beef that the leader passed off as deer). (Becky had a piece of it, thinking it was deer, but because beef gives her tummy aches, was in distress for the rest of the evening...). The boys set up shelters and make lean-tos out of branches and ferns, some of which were still standing when we went to clear the land.

Logs to lumber

We are logging trees on our property that will be cut up and used to build the house. This is a photo of Gregory Guest (son of Greg's Mobile Milling Service), running the portable mill on our property, getting ready to cut up a Douglas Fir that James felled (see excited James standing behind the mill!). We think we will be able to frame the entire house with wood logged off our own land, how cool is that?! The property has been designated a "Forestry Stewardship Council Certified Forest" by the Northwest Natural Resources Group (which gets us a green designation), and has a mix of 30-year-old red alder, hemlock, and Douglas fir (it was stripped 30 years ago by the previous owner). After the logs are cut, James is stacking them to dry in a solar kiln (future posting). You should see the huge pile of sawdust next to the mill.

Boy toys

We got our permit for clearing the land a few weeks ago; since then James has been renting the ultimate Boy Toy: an Excavator. Here he is grabbing and clearing a tree as he clears the homesite for future construction. Note the log across the lower left of the photo, which is about to be lifted up by the excavator. James is (barely) visible in the cab.

Building the home

Welcome to the blog as we build our home. "Wapiti Woods" has been a project for the last few years; we first saw this property in Nov. of 2005 (the day we first saw it, the neighboring meadow was covered with elk scat). "Wapiti" is a native American word for elk, alternately pronounced "Wah-pih-tie" or "Wah-peet-tee" (which echoes our name), and is translated to "white rump" (as elk appear), or in the vernacular, "white butt". "Wapiti Woods" seemed a natural name for the acreage.

The picture above is the SW corner of our future home. It is also the hemlock tree overlooking the firepit that the Boy Scouts used for their survival campout 2 winters ago, and is probably about to be plowed under within the next week or so. Stay tuned for future pictures of this same site. As the Realtor told us, "It takes vision to see what this property can become".