The handoff

The beginning of most construction projects is a bit slow. There is a lot of major work that needs to be scheduled and completed in a certain order. Our builder started by cleaning up the stumps and remaining brush. We had met our breaking point and were happy to handoff the project to the pros.

The heavy equipment showed up on Joe’s birthday and by the end of the week there was a driveway the Prius could finally make it up and a hole for the house!

The following week they formed and poured the footers.

Then the ICF’s arrived! For those of you who don’t know, ICF’s are Insulated Concrete Forms. They consist of two foam faces that are tied together by plastic webs that also hold the wall reinforcing. They basically go together like giant legos then the core gets filled with concrete.

My original drawings actually showed a typical poured concrete foundation wall with 2″ of exterior foam insulation. Even though most of the basement walls are below grade, it is still beneficial to insulate your walls and floor to minimize heat loss. I thought that I was using two somewhat standard materials so it would be the most cost effective way to achieve what we wanted. However our builder, Darren, is just as excited about energy efficiency as I am so he had already been working with ICF’s and showed us that it was actually going to be the same cost or less to use them. (Disclaimer: This isn’t true for every contractor or every location) Since the ICF walls have insulation both inside and outside the concrete they perform better too.

We used the Nudura brand ICF’s. Their ‘blocks’ are one of the largest on the market. They are 18″ high x 8′ long. It only took the crew about two days to set them in place.

There are houses out there that use ICF’s all the way up to the roof but with the layout of our walls and size of our windows on the upper floors, it didn’t make sense to continue them beyond the basement.

Bri was pretty sure she could have put the ICF’s together but luckily they were done by the time she showed up for an inspection. On a side note, I really hope the girls remember building the house when they are older..but in the event that they don’t I guess they can always read this!

Between the rain we have been getting and coordinating schedules, it took a little over a week to get the concrete pour scheduled. Yesterday was the big day. I stopped by just before the pumper truck and first concrete truck showed up and stuck around to watch them start the pour. I’ve seen a lot of concrete being poured in the past but it’s way more exciting watching it on your own house. I had to take off but they said it took about 5 trucks worth of concrete. 

Stay tuned! I’m hoping to write posts weekly from here on out talking about what’s going on and will continue to document why we chose the materials that we did.