Just poured the footings for a new home today.
This one’s been a booger. Multiple jogs, several steps and a bunch of rebar. Two thirds of excavation is at bedrock and form stakes had to be hammer drilled. Layout was a real challenge, even with rotary lazer and transit.
BUT, we poured today…no blowouts, cool weather (about 55 degrees and overcast and concrete order was right on the money (16 yds). Line pump and trucks were on time….started at 9 AM, stuck in the last vert. rebar at noon.
(And I love good drivers and pump operators…gave them $50 tips)
This location is in a canyon on a great river with steelhead fishing. House is 1800 sq. ft.
Footings will support 4′ to 9′ stemwalls. Will start that Monday.
Replies
cool , notch... gonna pour 'em or lay block ?
Mike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Gonna pour 'em. HO is a retired Navy Seabee (and former owner of an HVAC contracting firm) and wants things done right!
He says this is his last home. He's a hardass (I pity my poor heating sub!), but thinks like I do about taking a little extra time, a few extra bucks...and building it to last.
where's the site ? apx.....Mike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
About 20 miles East of Coos Bay, Oregon, about three miles up the West Fork of the Millicoma River. Sits on 5 acres....great site (except for the rock).
Actually, the rock is under a nice layer of loam. These inland coastal valleys and canyons get great gardening weather. I had the excavator stockpile the topsoil and these HO's are gonna have great gardens (if they can keep the Elk and deer out).
All we see here is slab on grade, so bear with me...what are all those small (2 ft x 2 ft) forms in the middle of the house?
Do it right, or do it twice.
What you're seeing is just the stemwall footings and the piers, varying in size from 2' square by 8" deep to 3' sq. X 12" deep are for post and beam "crawlspace" (headroom most places will be about 8').
One of the dificulties with the layout of this project was that the archy really hadn't done his homework on site and, in order to have a 100' setback from the river and still be 10' away from and upgrade from the septic tank, the footprint ended up in more difficult territory than originally planned.
Thus, the greater slope, the bedrock and some varying elevations to deal with.
I usually sub out concrete work like this and really didn't want to do this one for a number of reasons, but my main concrete guy is doing some large commercial stuff and was unavailable.
Some of you guys have probably done bigger and tougher ones, but this one was a bit of a challenge for me, plus it's been about 80-85 degrees everyday at the site, except today, for the pour!
I was glad to hear mention of the surveyor. As a friend of mine says, "It's a good feeling to get them otta of the ground" , well Notchman, seems like your headed in the right direction... Up. As I know you are aware of, whenever I hear the word "Changes" I think,, before, during, after. I wish you Well, looks like a neat neighbor hood. Jim J. ps how far away are you from Grants Pass, Oregon??
Grants Pass is about 150 miles by road. Nice town, by the way...Home of the "Cavemen."
Wow, that's a lot of direction changes for a smallish house. Looks neatly done, though. Woulda looked cool if round. :)
"...woulda looked cool if round..."
I actually thought about that while laying this one out! It occurred to me that laying out a constant radius might actually be easier than having to swing all those 90's.
In the past, I've hired a surveyor to spot corners on difficult layouts (they can locate corners within the diameter of a finish nail, regardless the terrain), but this time, all the guys with the good equipment are buried with work.
Hey Notch', those look like EVERY footing I ever did in Whistler, grade beams multi-steps, steep grades...... a joy to learn once, but after a while..........roll on. Cheers,Phil.If it is to be.... 'twil be done by me.
So next time, I know just who to call!
How high does the river get on the so called 500 year flood, witch seem to show up every 5 years. How close to the house would the 500 year flood get.
On this specific site, the river lays in a shallow ravine and the upper reaches of the flood plain are approx. 70 feet beyond the footings on the river side of the house.
Approval of the site plan without flood plain engineering required verification that the structure did not lay within the 100 year flood plain.
In this state, there is also a 100 foot riparian zone setback behind the high water mark that we managed by about 9 inches!
Notch,
Nice work! Couldn't some of those jogs be left out of the foundation and addressed with the use of cantilevers? Sounds a little easier. Let us know how everything lines up come framing.
BTW what's with the port-a-potty when you've got a perfectly good forrest? Got a mixed gender crew or something?
C
you use the woods also? wouldn't be from missouri would ya?
hey what is a porta potty anywho?
"...what's up with the port-a-potty...?"
Just out of camera view is a motor home with the HO's living there, and they've got walking trails through the woods and along the river. And my framing sub has a 5 man crew, so a growing population of brown-streaked doilies is not an option. :-)
I'll try to remember to take pics when I get the walls formed and poured.
As for the jogs, most are going to be filled with decks...the floor level will be elevated enough that the river and it's environs will be an important feature of the landscape.
Here's mine, just a pic. The hole's all dug. I spent two days in the hole with a laser pole wearing earplugs while Reggie the John Deere operator dug things out. The walls that stand atop footings will all come up to the same height, more or less. The footprint, nominally, is 26 x 54 feet, with some bumpouts on the rear side. A 22 x 32 garage, separate, is nearby, but since it ties in with a breezeway that coordinates with the house's trim scheme, placement (skewed) is needed to be done with precision. We be wearin' out the Construction Master.
Well, that almost looks familiar!
I'm almost looking forward to Monday and laying the walls out. Our site excavation was really uneven in places because of the rock, so it will be nice (I hope) to work off flat, level surfaces.
Talk your dirt guy into getting one of these. You can talk in a normal tone of voice while it's running!
2nd and 3rd pic are of a narrow, 90' private bridge (8' 9" wide, 2 RR flat cars) to access the property.
Just had a client build a bridge with a railroad car like that. He added guardrails and routed it for a strip of lights controlled by a sensor so they turn on as a car approaches. Didn't want anyone in the ditch at night. He's an EE and loves tinkering with this kinda stuff.
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Edited 6/1/2003 4:48:40 AM ET by Cloud Hidden
CH, Notchman,
What a great idea of using the rail car beds for bridges. Is this something that was thought up by the HOs or am I just leading a sheltered life?
Never seen it before(or noticed).
Mike
It's not uncommon. When well supported, they provide tremendous capacity.
Cloudhidden's and the one I posted look like the identical car configuration, but I've seen them made from cut down boxcars, too.
The one I posted was actually funded largely by FEMA about 5 years ago when the original bridge was taken out by a log jam during a flood.
It carries loaded log trucks and, of course, loaded concrete trucks regularly.
The County wants "sight rails" installed on this one because, when you're on it, you can only see the water on each side...a little hairy for the timid.
And the concrete trucks, with their wide front tires, just barely fit between the steel berms.
Thats whats great about this site.....here I am all worried about my excavation work and foundation work and I see all yer all pics.....geezzzzz, mine should be cake. Yikes!!!!
a......PS..whats yer feelings about what the strongets mix can be poured from a chute?
In his first interview since the stroke, Ram Dass, 66, spoke with great difficulty about how his brush with death has changed his ideas about aging, and how the recent loss of two old friends, Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg, has convinced him that now, more than ever, is the time to ``Be Here Now.''
http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
Edited 6/1/2003 12:03:50 PM ET by Andy Clifford(Andybuildz)
By strongest mix, I assume you mean psi rating, and in that regard, I don't think it's much of a factor.
What has most effect on the chute is the slump (wetter slides easier) and, of course, the slope of the chute (often dictated by site conditions.
When using a pump, which I do whenever possible unless it's a small hand mix job or can be easily reached with a chute, the pump operator pretty much dictates the slump. On this job, our mix was fairly stiff...but when filling cores in a block wall, the mix is generally pretty wet, with smaller aggregate, like pea gravel.
The job I just did was all down hill, which is worst case for a line pump because the water tends to run ahead of the mix, dry it slightly and cause plug ups. We had little problem, however, because I had a big strong kid keeping a loop in the hose for the operator. (a 4" hose is a heavy booger when loaded.
Best of all is a boom pump....costs a little more...but pretty painless and fast.
I always thought a pump used more water???????????
A pump in these parts costs about an extra $800.
In his first interview since the stroke, Ram Dass, 66, spoke with great difficulty about how his brush with death has changed his ideas about aging, and how the recent loss of two old friends, Timothy Leary and Allen Ginsberg, has convinced him that now, more than ever, is the time to ``Be Here Now.''
http://CLIFFORDRENOVATIONS.COM
The pour described here was 16 yds, took about an hour and a half...pump guy had to travel over 20 miles one way. Bill was $206.
A boom pump would have been about half again that much for a small 55 footer.
The line pump guys, when pumping down hill, lube their hoses with a wet clay mixture of some kind to create a slug ahead of the initial mix to keep the free water contained.
Y'know, when I looked at the pic, my thoughts were: what a great idea....definitely enough load capacity, about the right width, must save a fortune in engineering/fabrication(except for the pier in the middle), and best of all...it's got character, not like a standard steel bridge that size (or some wooden ones for that matter). If you had two on a property you could even use a whole boxcar and just knock out the end walls for a covered bridge on one.
'scuse me, gotta go dig a trench so I can cross it with a boxcar......
Mike
I'm going to suggest the lighting feature to the residents that jointly own the bridge...really nice!
I wish the bridge here had good approaches like yours...on ours, the entry off the main road is really tight.
Foundation came out great! Framers start tomorrow.
Not my normal thing, but a good experience, nevertheless.
Weather on this job has been beastly hot...with a beautiful river 100' away and too busy to enjoy it...until today! Had a beer!
Edited 6/25/2003 10:13:09 PM ET by Notchman