Race Against Time

Week 4: What a week. As my other posts stated, it was a week of progress and radical changes in the weather. We start out the week with high 90's and humid, then we basically dropped 40 degrees in one day and had a massive rain storm all day. We went over to the house today and I took a shot of the new addition and the level of all the rain. It seems every week we get more rain and it fills up even more. Well this week, we saw the race against time to get the step footing underpinning completed and get the foundation waterproofed and insulated. The underpinning is a series of steps at a 45 degree angle with rebar that is structurally attached to the old house. This makes for a solid structure. I felt bad for the concrete guys, setting up the forms and getting everything ready in the heat we had. All their hard work paid off in getting the forms poured and removed before the rain started. The foundation was waterproofed and the rigid insulation boards were installed. Then they back filled the dirt up against the foundation. Makes the area look quite different. They also cut a square and poured a footing for one of the new steel beam piers. When they dug out the hole, we see that the slab foundation looks to be built right on top of the dirt rather than having any crushed gravel for drainage. That was the major work from this week. Next week includes the starting of framing of the new addition and the installation of the steel beams. I elaborated on the installation steps for the beams last week so it will take awhile to complete all the steps. Once we can get the framing up, we will not have to worry about the rain filling up the basement anymore and can concentrate on the interior work. We spent today looking at gas fireplaces and found a great shop where the owner gave us plenty of information so we can make a sound decision. We need to let Mike know so he can relay it to the framers when they are creating the wall for the fireplace.


Here is the foundation with the green waterproofing membrane and the rigid foamboard. There is crushed gravel that is covering the exterior drain tile around the perimeter of the new addition.





Here is another shot of the insulation.









Here are the new window wells in the basement they are very long, but are needed as an egress from the basement.






Here is a shot of what the drain tile with the overlaying sock looks like.







This is the excavation for one of the new steel piers for the new steel beam. See the black dirt underneath the concrete.







Here is the step underpinning forms being prepared.









Here they are after the concrete was poured. Because of the way we needed to connect will mean we have a little less basement to work with but it will be structurally sound. Almost looks like we are putting in stadium seating.




Here is what it looks like with the dirt back filled against the foundation.







More back fill.








Here is the footing that was poured for the new steel pier.








This is the interior drain tile that is in the crawlspace.









This is the after the rain picture. Mind you, this was several days after the main rain, so there is quite a lot of water to be pumped out. We might as well just make it an indoor pool.





I was inside and took some more shots of the main structural beam from the bottom looking up to show you just how much they cut out of the beams to run a pipe. So basically they compromised the entire structure of the house with these cutouts. Luckily the floor did not cave in.




Here is the same beam, just a little ways down from the major cutout. This was for the HVAC ducts. They basically did it to keep the ceiling height what it was. Not very bright to allow this to happen. anyway, we will take care of this with the removal and installation of the steel beams.