Foundation & earthwork finished

Phew! Two and a half months have passed, and we've finally finished all the earthwork and foundation. This took longer than expected. With Seattle in the throes of a building craze, getting subs to schedule us in has been challenging; the site has been idle for roughly 1 month out of 2.5. Also, it was unexpected that we had to pour the backyard cottage foundation at a different time than the main house, which caused many subs to have to be scheduled twice. But the difference in height between the two foundations was too large, and the gap between them too small, to safely build both at the same time. Framing should start any day now; as soon as the framing crew finishes their current job. Here are the steps we've executed since the last blog post.

  1. Lay out footer drains, covered by a fine mesh and rocks of a certain size. This allows any high water around the foundation to drain out.
  2. Connect the main house sewer. This was tricky, as there was some risk we'd need to have a sewer pump to get waste from the basement to the height of the sewer in the road. We just barely made it with a natural gravity fall to sewer.
  3. Insulated the main house slab.
  4. Dug out the backyard cottage foundation. They had to go a bit deeper than expected to hit weight-bearing soil; they then filled in some structural fill. 
  5. Then the surveyor marked out corners, and the footers were laid out.
  6. Then up went form boards. The footers and walls were done in one concrete pour.

  7. Then the form boards were removed, and more footer drains laid out, plus electrical conduit to the main house.

  8. Dirt was then filled back in. At this point the foundation looked like almost nothing! Lots of engineering, waterproofing, and costs buried under dirt.
  9. The main house slab then had radiant heat tubes laid out.
  10. And, finally, both cottage and main house slabs were poured. (We also poured a 'rat slab' in the crawl space so that it has a nice floor I can store things on, like wine.) From this point on we should be able to have trades do both structures at the same time.

  11. The first round of framing lumber has been delivered, and we're just waiting on the crew!


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