20K House

Days 14-17: Those blooming girder and joist ledgers!

This, ladies and gentleman, is the reason we are not blogging about joists and plywood flooring right now. The middle girder and a few joists bear on the safe room foundation at the center of the floor plan. This requires drilling holes for threaded rod into the concrete, epoxying in the threaded rod, securing a wooden ledger to the rods, then finishing out the platform with joist hangers for the girder and joists. 

Turns out that boring 5/8” holes in our cured concrete takes a tick longer than we expected. It was all going smoothly with the big boss hammer drill, like a fairly dull knife through room temperature butter, until we broke a corner off. Thankfully, our safe room walls don’t sit at that corner, so we’re in the clear. 

From then on out, we turned the ‘hammer’ function of the hammer drill off. Then it was more like cutting through a knife with chilled butter. But we did it! The threaded rods are all set. Joists soon to come. Perhaps our findings simply mean we need to find a way to set the rod before we pour next time. 

Day 13: Building columns and girders, setting girders and columns. 

They’re up! Well, a few of them. The center girder bears on the safe room foundation. We’ll deal with that tomorrow. The other columns are built and awaiting their day (a couple of weeks in the future). 

Day 12: Form work comes off

By now you may have realized the days we refer to (above, for example) aren’t calendar days, but days actually spent on site. We let the concrete cure over the weekend and came back to unveil it. Ta-da!

Day 11: All the concrete is poured. It’s really happened, people.

We spent the morning building in the plumbing for the shower drain and finishing the rebar for the safe room slab. Since we’ve never done a safe room before, some of the finer details still take figuring out on site. We’re trying to pave the way, literally and figuratively, for potential future safe rooms in the 20K line. 

Day 10: We’re finally pouring concrete!

Thanks to John, Steve, Michael, and Franklin for joining the pouring crew. Everything went smooth as butter, though we ran out a bit before expected. No problem, however, as we need a cold joint in the safe room foundation between walls and slab anyway. Thanks to carriage bolts, drywall screws, doubled top plates, and tamped backfilling, we had zero forms busting. Nice work, crew!

Day 9: Setting Form Work Round Two

Day 8: Setting Form Work 

Today we arrived at site hoping to set all of our form work. With the help of Steve, better known as The Extraordinary Machine, we got through much of it. It was a slow start, as we realized we needed to add another level of strings for the inner safe room forms, but once we got going we were on a roll. We augered the final two holes, set an additional row of strings, cut and built rebar cages, installed the inner safe room form work, and staked and leveled half the pier forms. 

Day 6: Shoveling clay (and more formwork)!

We booked it to site this morning in order to beat the rain. Armed with shovels and post hole diggers, we scooped out the remaining clay from the holes. Just before the clouds rolled in, we covered the hole whole thing with plastic sheeting to keep the rain from filling them back up. 

Day 5: Augering (and more formwork)

While Peter, Meaghan, and Ingunn were holed up in the shop, sawing and drilling away, Johnny, Mackenzie, and Rennie took the Bobcat out for a spin. Johnny made some headway on the gigantic burn piles (the old house refuse), and the augering was a cinch! All except the two holes sitting directly atop an old concrete slab, that is. Turner aka Doc took to them with a sledge. The man’s 82 years old, people! None of us thought it prudent to try and break through that slab, though. Keep your eyes peeled for some hammer drill action next week.