The floor is done!

It is the middle of week 11.

Mark, Carol and I completed the deck yesterday, Wednesday, 20 June. 

We did all of our back checking for level and square and it is perfect!  Level within plus or minus 1/8" and square within 3/16" at 65'.

It took us about three days to complete the floor.  Mark and I put down the glue, set the plywood and took care of miscellaneous details and Carol put in 49 screws in each sheet of plywood, about 2,700 screws.  We used 18 quarts of glue.

We installed 10 wood foundation blocks within the floor framing, braced to the concrete floor/footings in the crawlspace to support the timberframe.

On Tuesday night Carol and I worked until about 8:00 pm, then set up chairs in what will be the engawa (veranda) and had cocktails.  It was chilly so we moved over to where the fireplace would be.

Next step is the timber frame.

End of week 10

We had a great week in heaven!!

This is the end of the tenth week of construction on our new home.  The 10th week was all about installing the floor joists.  The General Contractor (GC), Carol Borgen, tells me that the construction is right on schedule and under budget.

Mark Strege and I actually started framing up the floors on Friday the 8th of June.  We spent that Friday mapping out the elevations on the footings, making decisions on how we were going to build it level and started setting up the mud sill/ bottom plate (the 2x8 lumber that sits directly on top of the concrete wall).  The wall was fairly level on the north side but for some reason was low on the south side... I am taking credit for not reading the transit correctly.  We were told by Kevin Jenniges, our concrete guru, that footings and ICF walls can settle by a significant amount, so that may have something to do with it too.  The corners had lifted during the concrete pour so I had to spend a few hours chiseling them down with the hammer drill.

It took us a day and a half to get the bottom plate shimmed to level.  We started installing the wood I-joints on Monday afternoon.

By Tuesday we had about half of the joists installed. 

The I-joists are span rated at about 20 feet spaced on 16 inch centers so we had to build some structure under the joists to structurally support them.

The picture at right shows the crawl space, the space in the center will house two 625 gallon water tanks (because we have a very low flowing well), the water pump, pressure tank, water heater, and solar storage tanks.

The wall on the left side of the picture will be sheathed with 3/4 inch plywood.  All the heating pumps (we will have radiant heated floors), water distribution manifolds and other mechanical equipment will be mounted to this wall.

The space behind the wall will be storage.  The head room is about 5' 9" so Carol can walk upright but I have to duck.

While Mark and I were building floors Carol was installing the drain tile that runs around the perimeter of the foundation.

Chuck Howe, our excavator, e-mailed us on Thursday that he was going to be on site on Friday and backfill the "ditch" on the north side of the foundation so Carol and I worked late to get the crushed rock installed over the drain tile.  Carol drove the tractor and I shoveled the rock around... you can see that the work has been good for me, I continue to lose weight and get stronger.

The week draws to a close, below is a picture of the floor from "cell phone rock" (the only place we get good cell phone reception) on Friday afternoon.  Chuck Howe came in the morning and filled in the "ditch" on the north side of the foundation.  Mark and I added a couple more I-joists after the picture was taken before we decided to quit for the day, as the thunder storm was getting closer and it is never good to be on an open job site with lightening possible.

Living in this rural environment is delightful, every day we get to see some new critter.  Last week I caught sight of a yellow swallow tail butterfly on half a dozen occassions.  I haven't seen a swallow tail butterfly since I was  kid.  On Friday the butterfly below, which we think is a Variegated Fritillary, Euptoieta claudia, thanks to Urban Kiernan for help identifying, visited Mark and I, landing on each of us.

Schedule for next week:  Monday we will be ready to start laying the plywood floor.  We should complete the floor by Tuesday if it doesn't rain.  AND, Tom Bodensteiner, our timber framer, will be here on Wednesday or Thursday to start setting up the timber frame.  EXCITING!!!

Crawl space

We assumed that the crawl space was going to be small.  A couple of observations led us to this conclusion, the first being that the garage slab in the SE corner sits almost directly on rock.  The second, we rented an excavator a few years back and discovered rock only a foot underground on the east end of our site so we assumed the ridge of rock was contineous between the two spots.  So to our surprise when Howe Excavating, using a big bulldozer with a rip tooth, cleared out a lot of softer rock between the garage and the place we had dug with our small excavator and we realized a deeper crawl space. 

We had initially figured we were going to have about 2 feet of crawl space along the north wall, but now we have about 5' 6" of space.

We had initially planned to install a small slab, figuring that the only things that were going to be in the crawl space was the water and heating system.  Now we could also have some storage.  We poured a slab in the west 2/5ths of the crawl space.  The slab is insulated on the underside with 1" of XPS insulation and a vapor barrier to stop moisture migration and radon gas.

An additional slab will be poured between the new slab and the south wall (to your left in the picture below) later this summer.  There will be about 6'6" of head room in this part of the crawl space and we will use that for garden tools, lawn furniture, bicycles, etc.

The eastern 3/5ths of the crawl space has a huge rock protruding from the floor.  Not sure what we are going to do with that, we have talked about having an indoor Japanese Zen Garden and have also talked about setting up the train layout there... still too early to make a decision.

On Tuesday, June 5th, Jenniges Masonry poured the slab.

The schedule for the rest of the week was to let the slab set up for a couple of days and start the installation of the floors on Thursday, June 7th.  The weather looked bad on the 7th, in fact we had a thunderstorm, with over an inch of rain and an inch of hail.  I will post some pictures of that later.  Mark and I started the mud sill/bottom plate on Friday.

The timber frame erection has been delayed a couple of days to the 20th of June.

Insulated Concrete Forms

Time for a little catching up…

In the last episode we completed pouring the footings.  This episode is about forming up the crawl space walls.

We used Insulated Concrete Forms, referred to as ICFs, to form up walls.  Essentially the forms look like giant Legos, there are two blocks of foam separated with plastic spreaders, the top and bottom interlock just like Legos.   Each form is 12” tall, 13” thick and 48” long and weigh about 5 pounds.  Here Carol shows how they work.

23 pallets of GreenBlock brand ICFs were delivered on the 9^th of May, late in the afternoon.

Thursday morning we removed the wood forms from the footings and moved 10 yards of gravel into the center of the footings, this would eventually become the base for a concrete slab.

We started laying the ICFs on Friday morning.  Carol set up the blocks on the footings and installed the steel reinforcing bars, tying them together in the corners.  I played the go-fer, cutting blocks and rebar as necessary, installing the wood track on the footings that the ICFs fit into and verifying that things were square and level.

It took us only a few days to assemble the forms.  We even took off time to have supper on Saturday evening at the Sylvan Lake Lodge Restaurant to celebrate Mother’s Day.  The atmosphere, the food and the service were exceptional, we highly recommend it.  Sunday we worked part of a day and went climbing with Mark and Cheryl in the afternoon. 

Monday the 14^th, we completed the south wall about noon, as I was walking up to the garage for lunch, I felt a gust to wind and as I turned back toward the wall we had just completed, watched it blow over in slow motion.  We rebuilt the wall on Monday afternoon and got it braced for wind.  We also completed the forms for the tower, which were also ICFs but were manufactured by Dow Corning and called Fold Forms because they fold for transport.

Tuesday and Wednesday, Mark Strege was on site, he and I built the shoring system to hold the walls straight during pouring.

Carol and I worked on Thursday on miscellaneous odds and ends finishing late in the evening.

The crew from Jenniges Masonry arrived about 1:00 pm on Friday in a caravan with the concrete pumper in the rear.

Twenty minutes later the first of three concrete trucks arrived, each discharging 9 yards of concrete.

Immediately we had a blow out in a transition piece between the tower section and the main part of the house.  The site of the blow out was where we changed from Greenblock brand of Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF) to Owen Corning Fold Forms.  We worked for about 10 minutes feverishly and got that section braced.

The concrete crew worked their way around the forms in a counter clockwise rotation.  The GreenBlock stood up to the onslaught of the concrete pumper, the walls literally danced under the force of the concrete stream. 

The last part of the wall to be poured was the tower section and we had a couple more problems with the Fold Forms but managed to get everything secured and there was no major damage.

90 minutes after they arrived they left and we sighed a sigh of relief, no longer did we need to worry about the walls blowing down!

Lead

It is pronounced with a long e and is a reference for a gold seam that can be seen with the naked eye… an investigational lead… a lead to lots of money, perhaps!

Lead was established in the northern Black Hills in 1876 after the discovery of gold.  Lead has a population of about 3,000 people and is steeped in history.  Lead is the site of the Homestake Mine, the largest, deepest and most productive gold mine on the planet.  There is a huge hole in the ground and a huge array of shafts and tunnels going down over 8,000 feet!

It was Friday the 27^th of April.  It had been raining since the previous evening.

Our first stop was the Black Hills Mining Museum.

There were a lot of great pictures and a model of a gold mine shaft crane, stamper mill, steam engines and other accessories.  It looked to be a working model, there was a start switch but it didn't work.  I took lots of pictures and will use them when I start my model railroad... after I complete the house.

The locomotive shown below was used in the mine to move equipment around the mine and hauling ore to the shaft elevator.  When I first saw it I thought it was a steam engine but it didn't have a smoke stack or firebox... it took a few minutes to figure out it was powered by compressed air.

We also stopped by the Lead visitor center, it is where the below picture was taken.  Inside we watched a movie about Lead and the Homestake mine.

There were things to see outdoors but since it was raining we didn't dally outside except to run back and forth to the car.

We will have to come back later when it is not raining.  Some of the exhibits were closed until mid May.  There were a couple of tours that looked interesting.

Footing update

Tower section - this is where the pond is going to be.

Our timing on the footings was just perfect, it started raining on Thursday night and has been raining off and on for the last week.  We had a couple of nice days and have been removing the forms, so far we have the tower section done and the inside of the lower level.  As you can see in the picture above the forms didn't leak!  I was so pleased!

The 2x6 in the "pond" represents a rock that is going back in there... it is about 3 feet wide by 3 feet thick by 10 feet long and will be orientated in the same direction as that 2x6.

We had a half inch of rain over night (5 May 2012) so our work site is pretty muddy.  A couple of days of sun will dry it out.

The Insulated Concrete Forms (ICFs) are due on Monday or Tuesday (7 or 8^th of May).  They stack like Lego’s so they go quickly.  We are using two different brands of ICFs, the estimator on our garage project way over estimated the number of ICFs that we needed and then wouldn't take them back!  These have 10" cores so we are using them for the tower section - they will have to withstand the water pressure.

We are hoping to be ready to pour concrete about the 17^th.  

Footings

We poured concrete on Thursday, the 26^th of April 2012.  22 ½ yards.  Everything went great.

Kevin Jennegis and 3 of his concrete technicians arrived at 7:45 am.  Carol was tying rebar, “Do you want me to help you with that Ma’am?” one of the technicians asked.  Carol replied, “No thanks, this is my last one.”

“Don’t you have anything left to do”, he asked.  They arrive on the job site early to finish up last minute things that homeowners typically haven’t completed.

“Nope”, Carol replied.

I had one form remaining, the top step on the tower section.

We started building the forms on the 30^th of April.  It is hard work more fitting for young bucks and not old guys like me.  We worked 5 to 6 hour days, slow and steady, 27 days in a row, hampered by some rain and cold weather.  We had three soft start dates for pouring concrete and on Monday the 23^rd committed to pouring concrete on Thursday.  We worked until 7 pm on Monday, 8 on Tuesday and set up work lights on Wednesday.  I got up at 5:30 on Thursday and headed out to complete the forms.  We were pretty tired of building forms.

The concrete truck arrived about 8:00 am and they started pouring concrete on the lower section of the forms, where the great room and guest bedrooms will be located.  This gave me time to continue to work on that last form and by the time they had emptied the truck, 9 yards of concrete, I had completed the last of the form work.   We waited about 40 minutes for the second truck to arrive, another 9 yards, this load completed the lower section and started the tower section.  The third load was 6 ½ yards. 

The forms held beautifully!

They gathered up their equipment and were off the job site a few minutes before noon.

We really enjoyed working with Kevin and his crew!  They were very skillful and South Dakota polite.

As soon as they had gone, I opened a beer.  Yeah, that is a bit unusual for me, but I felt like a bit of celebration was in order.  I had two.

Eyore's brother

That afternoon Carol drove us through the wild life loop at Custer State Park.  It was a wonderful trip, the scenery is beautiful and varied and we saw lots of wildlife: deer, several herds of bison, eagles, meadow larks, mountain goats, antelope, and a wild burro.  We stopped by the park office and got our new Custer State Park annual pass.

We continued through the park, our destination Lintz Brothers Pizza in Hermosa, roughly 20 miles from Custer.  Lintz Brothers Pizza recently won the Pasta Madness Contest through the Rapid City Journal, a contest juried by the public.  We had the whole wheat thin crust made with beer, it was exceptionally good.  We will be highly motivated to go back again.

After pizza we headed back through the park, this time taking the road to the Black Hills Playhouse.  This road wanders through the park, out into the Norbeck Wilderness Area, and then back into the park. 

Along the way we saw a male wild turkey serenading a female.  His snood and wattle so red that you thought they were lighted… strutting his stuff, doing a little dance… it was great fun to watch.

Further along the road we came to the Black Hills Playhouse, where two bison were quietly browsing next to the administration building… very close… and moving closer.  The folks inside were pretty titillated, we could hear them from the road.  What an adventure that must have been for them.

The last leg of our adventure was along the Needles Highway… through tunnels and past the Needles Eye. The rock formations along this highway are fantastic – so majestic – beyond description.

All in all, a great day!