Basement Concrete Floor

Pouring the concrete for the basement happened on Thursday, June 21st.  Hulio, whom you met earlier in a post about Lynn's house arrived at 6:00 am to finish getting everything ready and the concrete trucks were supposed to start coming at 7:00 am and have one come every 30 minutes.  the first truck did not arrive until 7:30.  So we all sat around and talked.  Hulio has 6 men with him this date. 

Here is the truck backing up the hill.  Hulio has to connect his apparatus to the concrete pump that Hulio brought.  Have you ever had to use a wheelbarrel to get the concrete from the truck to the area that was being finished?  Well Hulio has a wonderful little pump and hose system that takes all the work out of that.

The truck dumps the concrete into this pumper, then hoses are connected.

With everything set up, they went to work.

Look what they are doing with a 2 x 4.  Look below for some more "technology" that they use to help level the concrete out.

See the spikes every 6 feet or so sticking out of the plastic.  The top of the spikes act as a guide, using the 2 x 4 board and this is the level lines to help the crew keep the concrete level as they go.  the concrete dries quickly, so they have to work fast.

this is a bull float.  They smooth out as they go making it nice before they get too far away from that spot.  Soon everyone is working on different things.

Before long we have progress.  this guy is the final finisher.  He uses the bull floats and  polisher to get it perfect.  I think this is 2 trucks worth of concrete and the 3rd truck is late.  Everyone is grabbing a bite.

Look at this guy, wearing funny shoes, like skis, so he can walk on the concnrete to do some more smoothing.  See the trowel in his left hand.

Some scenes from the final corner and finishing of the floor.

The final corner doesn't need the hoses as the concrete truck back up to that corner

At the end of the day, they are all very tired and the finish man is making it pretty.  They worked non-stop from 7:30 am to 3:00 pm, a hard days work.  They let the concrete set up overnight and cure on Friday, but Saturday, they laid some 8" block.  See the area of block jutting out to the left.  That is the utility room, which will have complete surround by block and a steel door.  Next post, putting in the rest of the support walls.

Foundation Flooring

Now that we have the 12" blocks up and the plumbing laid, we can continue going up with the foundation.  Next comes preparing the basement for flooring.  First the insect man comes and treats the area under where your concrete floor will go.  Once inspected, the gravel arrives and gets spread around.

They dumped the gravel in front of the house and our contractor Harrty, moved it inside the house area with his little backhoe.  This is fun for Harry I am told.

Meet Cody.  He had to spread the gravel all around and make sure it is 4" deep.

Above is a view of the gravel all spread, except for the footing areas inside which will support walls.  Next comes foundation insulation under the slab.

 They take these 4 x 8 sheets of insulation and cut them in half and lay them all around the outside walls.  This is supposed to keep the concrete floors from being cold.

See the black line around the top of this block.  The insulation sits below this on top of the gravel but under some plastic.  The black line is a level line to where the top of the concrete is poured.









This pictures shows the blue insulation under the black lines on the blocks and plastic on top of it.

All inspected and ready for concrete.

Plumbing and Posts

What you see below is the rough in plumbing for the basement areas that needs plumbing, plus catching the plumbing that comes down from above.  Since all this plumbing has to fit inbetween the walls and we have no walls yet, it takes precisse measurements.  The plumber arrived on Wednesday, or yesterday and did his work in one day.

Hard to be precises when you have walls and dirt.  But they know what they are doing.  In the middle picture above on the right, you see the plumbing for the bathroom in the basement and a washer/dryer hookkup.  In pictures one and 3 you see plumbing to catch everything from above and on the left in the bottom picture you see plumbing for the little kitchenette that will be in the basement in the future.

In the picture below, notice the two smaller rectangular areas of concrete in the middle.  These are for posts to hold up the steel beam, which will support the middle two modular home boxes.  Using a steel beam instead of posts, frees up the basement area wiithout having to have posts to hold it up.  the open room will look great with 12 foot high ceilings!! 

Oops, this picture is a duplicate from the footings post.  More on the steel beam later.

Finally Footings

Finally we are going again.  Since our last post March 24th, we have moved dirt around 2-3 times from one place to another, cut trees to clear the view and mulched them, then waited the past month for the wet weather pattern to change so we could dry out the hill and get some footings dug.  Well we finally have them.  Last week on Tuesday, the hill was dried out enough to dig the footings and put in the re-enforcing bar.  Inspection Wednesday morning and they were pouring concrete in the footings by Wednesday afternoon.  Here is what we looked like late Wednesday.

Thursday morning concrete block arrived and the block masons were busy at work too.

 Thursday evening, we had this.

By Saturday evening, we had this:

And from the other viewpoint above:

The finished block in the basement, now looks like this:

The rest of the basement will be stick built to level out the foundation for the first floor.  Concrete block 12" wide is used where dirt will be backfilled against the foundation. Then concrete fills the cells all along the walls that will have dirt against them, mostly the back wall, which is 12 feet high, or 19  courses high.  Enough for now, will post some more tomorrow.  We have a floor to pour.