Our House

[miramadar]

Andy, Looking forward to the progress of your project. I like and can appreciate how you guys got started. I feel your (as well as your spouses) patience will be rewarded as you go along.

Thanks for the comment. I have to say that we have been blessed. Every time we run into a stumbling block, something good comes of it. For instance, we had a lot of problems out of the person we were initially going to hire to build it. He wouldn't return our calls as we were getting ready to start. It just so happens that a guy that we go to church with, who is a Mennonite missionary, offered to build it for us. He's turned out to be an excellent builder. And he's doing the work for a fraction of the cost of a typical builder. All the money is going to the Mennonite group to support their mission of remodelling, fixing and building houses for impoverished folks in our area.

Things really just are falling into place. When we run into obstacles, we don't worry about it. We just find ways around them.

 

[jayste]

Thanks for the comment. I have to say that we have been blessed. Every time we run into a stumbling block, something good comes of it. For instance, we had a lot of problems out of the person we were initially going to hire to build it. He wouldn't return our calls as we were getting ready to start. It just so happens that a guy that we go to church with, who is a Mennonite missionary, offered to build it for us. He's turned out to be an excellent builder. And he's doing the work for a fraction of the cost of a typical builder. All the money is going to the Mennonite group to support their mission of remodelling, fixing and building houses for impoverished folks in our area.

Things really just are falling into place. When we run into obstacles, we don't worry about it. We just find ways around them.

Bless you! Sounds like you're being blessed! Our God truly does work in mysterious ways. Sounds like the last builder wasn't a fit....for anyone.

 

[20 20]

You have a good-looking set up. I like how you've to it raised off the ground.

I added an extra 10' so that I can cut up to 19' logs. I like having the jacks so when the ground does shift{from season to season} all I have to do is make a couple of turns and I'm back in the game. I've also built a shed at one end so that I can just push the head into it and not worry about weather.

Here's a funny story...one Saturday we went into the woods and cut down an absolutely enormous hemlock. It was every bit 3' in diameter at the base. We worked all day on that tree, cutting it down and limbing it. It was on a very steep incline on the mountainside so we had to take our time and be careful. Anyway, we finally hauled it out of the woods to the mill. We got the bark off of it and put the first (thickest) part on the mill. That was a chore in itself!. We were very anxious to see just how much lumber we could get out of it. Well, we started sawing it and noticed that the wood was very soft. It was like styrofoam. I could embed a hammer a good 6" into the wood. We thought it might clear up, so we continued to cut. It never did clear up. We inspected the rest of the tree and found the same thing...the wood was like styrofoam. We wasted the entire day on that log.

I hear that loud and clear, did the same thing last year. The tree was so big I even had to trim it so it would sit on the mill{over 36" diameter}. Made a huge cant and then started working through the log{we wanted wide boards} center was garbage. What a waste of time plus all the crap we went through loading onto the mill. We did get a couple of pieces of wood but not even a 1/4 of what we should have . Sometimes them big logs can be deceiving.

 

[miramadar]

Pouring the concrete...

We used 64 yards of concrete!! But those guys were great. They got it all down in 1 day, came back the next day and took down their forms.

 

[miramadar]

The finished slab and delivery of the 12" concrete blocks for the basement.

 

[Slackdaddy]

I'll have to say, in all my years of building, I have never seen a basement slab poured as part of the structural foundation.
Typ the foundation wall is laid on the footer, with a floating slab 4"-6" above that, so any water that gets through the wall is UNDER the slab, not on it ?


Nick

 

[tommu56]

I'll have to say, in all my years of building, I have never seen a basement slab poured as part of the structural foundation.
Typ the foundation wall is laid on the footer, with a floating slab 4"-6" above that, so any water that gets through the wall is UNDER the slab, not on it ?


Nick

I have to agree Nick Ive only seen one similar but the walls were poured and besides the rebar up in to the wall there was a key below wall section and a plastic dam cast in to that key and the walls were poured spanning the key/dam any vertical joints in the poured walls had the same arraignment rebar key and dam material and it haven't ever leaked

tom

 

[miramadar]

I'll have to say, in all my years of building, I have never seen a basement slab poured as part of the structural foundation.
Typ the foundation wall is laid on the footer, with a floating slab 4"-6" above that, so any water that gets through the wall is UNDER the slab, not on it ?


Nick

We did install what they called a "water stop" in the slab which is a 6" wide strip of rubber that goes around the entire perimeter of the slab. About 2" of the strip is embedded in the concrete and about 4" sticks up. We then used what was called "knock out blocks" for the first run. There is a picture in an earlier post of me cutting notches out of one of these blocks to set down over the strip. We then filled the entire first run of blocks with concrete to give it extra strength. Actually, we filled all the blocks that were below grade about halfway up the wall (5') and then filled the remaining cores on 42" centers with 2 pieces of 1/2" rebar per state code.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[miramadar]

Laying the block...

 

[miramadar]

The final blocks are laid...

This was on Dec. 5, 2009. As you can see, it was snowing pretty hard. And the weathe just got worse and worse as the winter wore on. This has been the worst winter to try to build. If there wasn't a foot of snow on the ground, it was so muddy you needed webbed feet to move around. But I take my hat off to my builders. They came snow or shine. He's originally from Canada, so I guess he's used to it.