My Industrial Cabin Build

[rScotty]

While proper compaction under the concrete is important, you will not see any cracking in a new slab from poorly compacted soil. That will take years, or even decades to happen.

I've never seen a residential pour that could pass a slump test, including my own house. Pouring it that dry requires a massive amount of additional labor, which nobody building a house is willing to pay. The other thing to remember is that those cracks from the water rarely cause any measurable problems with the finished house. Less water is better, but more importantly is getting the slab poured and nicely finished that day with the crew that you have there to do it.

That's the value of the forum....exposure to different ways of doing things. BTW, I agree that compaction takes longer to show up. In fact, I agree with most of what Eddie is saying here.... it's just two different ways of doing things. One minimizes the cost and time and is generally more than good enough, the other maximizes the strength of the foundation but is wasted money for many.

My own house cost about $275K to build and took me 30 months - usually with help and sometimes without. The cost was kinda high because I had to bring in power a long ways, build a water crossing bridge, plus put in a well and septic.

I got a basic bid on the foundation and then decided to change from basic to a hugely overbuilt foundation. Concrete is cheap. With extra backhoe work, overbuilding the foundation and paying for top quality concrete & crew changed my basic foundation from an $18K job to a 25K job and added a month to the time. Now ten years and one major flood later I am glad I did.

BTW, I've never seen a concrete crew on a residential pour who didn't test the concrete for slump. They need to do that not so much to "pass" as to get an idea of what the mix is. Decent slumps can have a fairly wide range, but I feel a need to to know what I am working with. It's not like I do this everyday.... A wetter mix has greater slump and is used (along with extra rebar steel) when the concrete needs to be able to flow.
On my house I called for a slightly wetter mix for walls, footers, and support columns to get the flowability and compensated with more steel and a longer wet cure time. From my perspective I'd say what I do is pretty basic homeowner style concrete work.
rScotty

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Did your son in law explain why 8' walls are framed 8'1.5" ? Short answer is that it would be real tough to squeeze 8' of drywall (two 4' sheets, horizontal) under a ceiling that is exactly 8' tall, but what we really like is also having the ceiling drywall (1/2") tucked in tight to the wall, and have the wall drywall come up underneath it to support the edge. Then you want extra slop to get the wall sheets in there. Normally you end up with 3/4" to 1" gap down at the bottom.

If you're not using drywall or the wall height isn't a multiple of drywall sheet size, or other reasons to have some slop, I think the dimension isn't so important and your 8' "on the nose" walls would have been OK. But I bet the first guy who tried putting drywall on an exact 8' wall quickly realized his mistake and got real sick of shaving down one of his sheets!

One big mistake I see rookies make is not adjusting the stud spacing at the edge of walls. 16" on center for the middle studs is good, but for the edge studs you want 16" from the end to the center of the next stud (so those will be 15.25" on center). Get that wrong one time and it's another mistake that will slap you in the face!

There are a lot of little details like this in framing that don't really matter for the structural aspect, but they make downstream steps work a lot better. Really, the framing is often driven by stuff that attaches to the framing as much as the structural requirements.

Good summary!! Your drywall guy will hate you if the walls are 8' exact.

 

[Steppenwolfe]

Sheetrock on the ceiling should be 5/8" thick if your joists are on 24 inch centers. 1/2 inch will sag on you over time unless it's on 16 inch centers, and it's very rare for anybody to do a ceiling with 16 inch centers.

Good advice on tweaking the studs. I make mine line up with the outside sheeting because it's more important to me to have full sheets out the outside with minimum cutting, then it is to have the sheetrock line up perfectly. I also like to use 12 foot sheets when I can go from wall to wall and only have one seem down the middle.

What are you using for sheathing? OSB is $7 a sheet right now and I like it a lot better then half inch plywood. Zip System is closer to $20 a sheet, plus the tape is another $25 a roll, but it's by far the best product out there. It also comes in different lengths from 8ft, 9ft and 12ft. Maybe more, but that's all I've bought. It's a tighter, more compact compression of the wood with a rubbery type paint on the outside so you don't have to use house wrap. The best part for me is that I don't have to worry about getting my siding up right away. You can easily leave it exposed for a year or two!!!

Also remember that when installing sheathing and sheetrock, that you always want to put it up first, and then cut out the openings. This avoids cracking at the window and door corners and adds a lot of strength. DIY people will run a full sheet up either side of a window, then cut a small piece for above and below the window. This is wrong and should never be done.

Eddie, I seem to recall you were once a Union Carpenter, as I still am. What we do in commercial construction is almost a whole different animal than residential. I just finished a major master bath remodel in my house, and what a pain in the butt. Working with wood studs, NAILS..., Romex, and subs that are residential guys was trying. We gutted the entire 400 sq ft to the studs and started over. I hate drywall finishing so I hired a guy to hang and finish 40 plus boards and he laid them down ! I tried to get him to stand them up like we do, but no way... So, 8 weeks later we have a beautiful new bath and I still managed to learn a few tricks. But... Ya'll can have those wooden studs, I'm sticking to metal.

 

[s219]

Also remember that when installing sheathing and sheetrock, that you always want to put it up first, and then cut out the openings. This avoids cracking at the window and door corners and adds a lot of strength. DIY people will run a full sheet up either side of a window, then cut a small piece for above and below the window. This is wrong and should never be done.

I've even seen pro framers do it the patchwork way and it drives me nuts. The other thing that drives me nuts is when they use a sawzall for window/door cutouts and do a sloppy job. When I worked for my dad decades ago, we would lay the sheathing the correct way regardless of any openings, then later use a big router with a plunge bit to hog out the window and door openings. It looked neat as a pin and was very fast and efficient.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

His outside walls are SIP.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

I've even seen pro framers do it the patchwork way and it drives me nuts. The other thing that drives me nuts is when they use a sawzall for window/door cutouts and do a sloppy job. When I worked for my dad decades ago, we would lay the sheathing the correct way regardless of any openings, then later use a big router with a plunge bit to hog out the window and door openings. It looked neat as a pin and was very fast and efficient.

I put on sheathing before standing wall, cut out window doors with circular saw.

 

[WoodChuckDad]

edit. Edit

 

[WoodChuckDad]

Your SIL is a good kid... :thumbsup:

He really is. I knew he was a hard worker, a good husband and a good father. But last weekend I found out how sharp he is and how talented.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

I was taught by an excellent framer. He was so quick, knew exactly what needed done and didn't waste time.

What you got done looks great.

 

[WoodChuckDad]

We had an opportunity to get up there this week And drill the holes and put in the anchor bolts. It went very well I did a lot of prep work making sure I knew where the anchor bolts went and where the lines were and I still got a little bit nervous and even with all that work pouring over the plans and pouring over the photographs that I had I still ended up making a mistake in putting some of my anchors too far apart. So got to go back in and put about four more in there.
Drilling Radiant concrete slab. And bonus owl puke?. - YouTube