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!