Water, Sewer and Maybe Power

After a couple weeks of delay, my excavator and the plumbing electrical company were all on the same page and on Thursday August 21 all the stars were aligned. At around 8AM the truck showed up with two dirt machines, and things began, a little later the plumbers showed up, and the my cement finisher, showed up to drop off the scaffolding he is loaning for when I am working on the 8 ft walls above the slab. Below is a gallery of pictures of the activities of the day, and the end result by mid afternoon.

Perry in the excavator and Shawn my cement guy and his wife

Kelly and Travis working on the sewer connection

Moving topsoil from the location of the future driveway

Working on the pipes

Laying the conduit for the electrical connection

The sewer extension to my trailer

All the trenches closed up

Note the standing Tree on Saturday morning, closed trenches and gravel in driveway

All day Saturday I was working with my friend Craig at his place near Lake Erie fabricating the “mini-crane” which I will use to pour concrete into the cores of the block in the house structure. For the foundation it will move on wheels up close to the wall, and the cement hopper will drop concrete down into the blocks. For the high wall, it will sit on the top of a scaffold with wheels, and do the same job on the 8 ft wall. As I returned that night, as I came up the street I realized the big tree just outside my east side, was gone. I had asked the village, who own the tree to evaluate it, since there was a substantial area of rot in the main trunk. The decided it should go, so I would not have a windfall on my house at some time in the future. I didn’t know when the crew was coming, and was sort of disappointed that I hadn’t been there to see it come down. I will miss it, it was a lovely shade tree during my mortar mixing, and I will now be out in the sun all the time. However I will not miss the possibility of catastrophe, it was a really big tree, at least 80 ft tall, and more than 3 ft of trunk at the base.

My friend Craig with the nearly complete base frames for the cement crane and the hopper.

The big tree is down and almost all gone

The Stump, see the rot and damaged heart wood, the dark stuff.

The bottom few feet of the tree trunk with the rotted area

There was another bit of work that needed to be done before the first bit of back filling of the foundation, I had to lay the pipe for hot water, and radiant heat feed from the mechanical room in the house to the garage/workshop and insulate them to reduce the heat loss. I did some experiments on Friday, and had a working plan to put the pipes inside a four inch perforated septic pipe, and spray insulating foam through the perforation. I worked, and that seemed to be the next step, but on Saturday I bounced the idea off Craig, and he pointed out that the spray foam in the cans was highly absorbent of water, and thus it was not a good plan. He suggested using the commercial foam guy that did the insulation on his dome, and the foundation. This foam is closed cell and highly resistant to water absorption. So on Monday I called the foam guy, and today, Tuesday he showed up at about 2pm and sprayed the pipes, which I had installed this morning, in the trenches I had dug on Monday. It all came together quite nicely.

Insulated connecting pipes to the solar heat storage tank which will be about 30 ft north of the house in its own shed.

Insulated water lines, and radiant heat lines from mechanicals room in house. and under the footing.

Insulated water lines, and radiant heat lines between house and garage/workshop.

Looking into the garage/workshop foundation, insulated pipes coming up in the bathroom area.

Building the foundation wall

The technology I am using for building my house primary structure is drystack concrete block. The blocks are special for the purpose, with interlocking edges and ends, exactly 8X8X16 inches designed and licenced by Azar, http://www.azarblock.com/. The first course is mortared and carefully leveled and aligned in the mortar. Successive layers are simply stacked on that base layer. Rebar is tied to the stubs that were in the footing, and extend in the first case 4 ft upward to where the floor slab will meet the foundation wall. After finishing the base course of blocks on Friday, I had a rest day Saturday and part of Sunday, and then set about cutting the rebar and tying it to the stubs in the footing. Monday was the August “Civic Holiday” in Ontario, so I used part of it to finish the rebar task, and was ready to go on Tuesday with the grunt work of stacking the blocks. This is done with a mason’s string line to guide the straightness of the stacking and a level to make sure the stack is not shifting in or out from the designed wall line. The pictures below show where I was on Tuesday night. It was a brutally hot humid day, and I was exhausted when I finished.

End of block stack day 1 looking from NW corner of house foundation

Block stack day 1 looking at garage completed 3 courses.

Day 2, Wednesday was a much more civilized temperature and humidity, and much was accomplished. I finished the garage to full five courses, and part of the house also to full five courses as shown in the pictures below. As I began to see the actual height of the foundation relative to the surrounding terrain, I began to wonder if the specified six courses of blocks was really necessary, and if five course would be adequeate to meet code for distance from footing base to “grade” for backfill to leave one course of blocks exposed.

Block stack Day 2, five courses on two walls of house foundation and all of garage.

Block stack Day2, looking across at 5 course done on garage.

Block stack Day 2, Looking at complete garage, and long 5 course wall of house foundation.

Day 3 I needed to go to the little hospital around the corner for a blood test needed for my Dr. appointment next Monday, so burned a little time, and then had a luxury breakfast of eggs and sausage at the little diner up the street. Left a call with my building inspector to get the real goods on what the code says about foundation depth, and got the word that I need 42″ inches from bottom of footing to grade, and one course of blocks above grade. With my 10 inch thick footing, and 4 courses of block, I have my 42 inches, and course 5 is my extra course of block. So course six would not appear to be necessary. With all the chasing about, and getting information didn’t get started till 2pm, but by 6pm had finished all but a short section of wall on the side facing the garage, as shown below. About 50 blocks should fill it. I will first remove most of the excess blocks from inside the walls and restack them on pallets outside in waiting for building the actual house walls.

Block stack Day 3, only one small section of about 50 blocks left to be stacked in house foundation for complete 5 course stack.

I discovered that hauling blocks out of the foundation and restacking them out of the way is a lot more “back intensive” than just stacking them from the pallets into the wall. Started moving them out on Friday, and realized that after a couple hours, my back needed some recovery. Saturday another couple hours and most of the blocks out of the House foundation. Sunday was heavy rain all day, about an inch and it was cold as well as damp. Monday morning I made a trip into St. Thomas to pick up some steel to build the mini-crane will use for pouring the concrete into the wall cores. Inaddition I had an appointment with a chiropractor to ‘tune up’ my back, and a 1PM visit with my internist to consult about my blood lipids. All of those were successfully completed and after lunch I got the last of the blocks and pallets out of the house, finished the wall, and got a good start on removing the excess blocks from the garage foundation. Below are some shots of the current status of the foundation.

All the blocks in place for 5 courses of the foundation, all extras out of house foundation.

Looking at the completed blocks from the north side.

Looking from the East, the 3 pallets of blocks removed from inside the foundation are stacked on pallets outside.

A new construction/personal milestone

Well on Monday I was on my own with the mortar, trowel, blocks and level. The first few blocks were very slow; I was ultimately cautious in making sure everything was true and level, and to the mason’s string stretched between the corners I was working to fill. The pace picked up as I grew more confident, and my production reliability of mortar water balance was honed. By the end of Tuesday, I had a pretty good start, and then early on Wednesday morning the heavens opened, and about an inch (2.5 cm) of rain was bestowed upon the land. The farmers were happy 🙂 I had a morning off because as you can see from the picture below the ground inside the footings was muddy. The picture was taken after some of the water had drained down into the sandy clay subsoil.

The great flood 🙂

I kept at it steadily, starting in the afternoon on Wednesday on one of the driest walls. By Friday I had the end in sight, one very short wall and the longest wall of the house. Below are some “action shots” me doing blocks and the final finished view of the completed first course.

Applying mortar to the footing.

Setting a block into the mortar on the footing.

The finished block course from the northwest corner of the house.

Looking at the finished complete first course of blocks set in mortar.

Finished it a little after 5 pm and had an invite from my friends Don and Ellen for dinner. So cleaned up the tools and put them away, and then had my public shower with the nicely solar heated water in my 100 foot hose which had been lying in the sun for several hours; very refreshing, and didn’t run out of hot water till I had accomplished the necessary. What a joy to have a good well for both concrete mixing and personal use. It definitely merited the celebratory bottle of Cabernet Savignon we had with dinner 🙂