The Concrete Man Cometh

It's been a busy couple of days! Ropak has been on site during most of the daylight hours getting the footings and cribbing ready. Ron brought in a crew including two of his sons and a couple of other guys that know concrete. This is the part that is sort of out of my league so I just stood back and let them work. Like I said before, I've never had any real experience with foundations or pouring concrete so I'm leaving it to the professionals.

I stopped by Monday morning and they already had the forms for the footings set up. For those who don't know, a footing is simply a wider concrete plate under your foundation that helps spread the weight of the house. It also provides a level platform to build on. You'll see in the photos how the garage is; it's about 3' shallower than the rest of the house. I thought there was supposed to be a keystone detail or metal rods sticking out of the footing to stop the foundation from shifting but they said they only do that on walls over 10' or when there is a really high water table. He said the sheer weight of the foundation and house will keep in in place. Ooooooh-kaaaaaay. Sounds like "famous last words" to me but we'll roll with it. Everyone says he's the best around so I'm going to trust him. If it's no good, we'll sell the house and start again :|

Having worked on the sidelines of commercial construction for years, I'm still amazed how much improvisation goes on at construction sites. Ron and I were talking and he said "I don't want to make your driveway too steep so I'm going to drop the garage foundation and pad a foot from what's shown in the drawings; you OK with that? You'll just have to make your garage walls taller." Yeah - sure - that works. Same thing with the back door to the garage. He called and said that it was specified as 32" but wanted to know if I'd prefer a 36". Sure - sounds good.

They took most of Tuesday to do the cribbing. Cribbing isn't when you cheat on your tests at school (ie: crib notes); it's the wooden forms that you pour the concrete. They create window bucks so you have something to nail the glazing units into and this all gets cast into place. It's pretty cool to see how they ran all of the weeping tile around the foundation. No water problems here! (fingers crossed). I'm curious what they're doing about the structural columns in the front and back though...

The cement pouring guys took Remembrance Day off, which probably worked out for the best since the cribbers worked until after dark as it was. They have two to pour tomorrow now. Ours is easy in comparison to this other one: it's on a hillside and has nine steps in the foundation. I'm excited to see what they get done tomorrow. It's only supposed to take about 3o minutes to pour all the cement they need. I'm not really needed there but I think I should show up tomorrow just to satisfy my own curiosity and make sure that I know they aren't missing anything (not that I'll notice until the forms are removed).

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