Getting Concrete About It

RJ Stegora spent this rainy, muddy week putting up ICF and shoring lumber for the concrete delivery on Friday.  Their careful preparation made the last day seem smooth and simple.

Shoring Lumber

Bracing one wall against another

Long-reaching Concrete delivery fills even the back wall cavities.

Concrete pump delivery makes tall or long-reach construction faster and simpler, where in the past, someone might have to carry the load in a wheel barrow, or perhaps a crane with a bucket.

 

View from the west side

Here, you can see on the far left as a truck delivers concrete to the site, where it is fed to the pumper.  The operator, in yellow, controls the process remotely from outside the cab.

 

 

North wall of the house, with concrete-filled cavity and rebar ready for the next level.

 

How the concrete feed-tube looks at the delivery end:

Finishing the wall-top to be smooth and level.

 

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Watch for the next edition, to see exterior insulation and cladding applied.

Out of the depths: despite mud & muck, a house rises above the basement.

The last week has offered miserable weather, with alternating rain and muggy sunshine.  New materials arrived on site, lumber being the most of it.  Midsummer day is well past, and the year ripens toward autumn.  Minnesota stays hot and humid well into August, and it helps us to imagine that the coming winter will be a good change.

The photos show the on-going stages of construction.  We watch with anticipation, each phase, and how the construction team puts ideas into action and form.

Summer-ripening Apples

Hardware to hold up the ground floor trusses

Steel Posts for support

The inside plywood supported at the edges forms a nice pattern.                                                                               Concrete will fill the ~8″ space between the plywood and foam. 

The wall-top plate with brackets for the trusses

Trusses being fitted in place

Sub-flooring half-completed

The open area on the far side is for the stairwell

The garage and breezeway are going up south of the house. 

Pre-built forms have a reversible shape for stable construction. 

 

Dragons Guard Here. 

 

 

Time lapse: wall forms going up

Time-lapse: rebar and concrete

This video shows the foundation and basement floor rebar being finished, and then the concrete being poured.

Cast in Stone

The morning started like this:  It rapidly became a busy place, with the largest crew so far, and concrete and supplies delivered throughout the morning and early afternoon.

From the West, we see the concrete pouring sleeve in use.

Up close with 18 boots, lots of long handles, and rebar to step around.

There’s a lot of rebar

Concrete shooting out of the sleeve. It looks like a very large pastry bag.

Skilled hand work is important for tight spots.

The last corner to be filled. You can see the depth of the slab, and the density of rebar.

This is an example of extreme multitasking.

Hand work in tight spaces on that last corner.

There are 3 concrete trucks in the picture. It was a busy spot.

Power float team!

ICF (Insulated Concrete Forms) delivery.

There are a lot of these!

This is the company which makes the ICF we’re using.

Lessons from RJStegora:  How to assemble the connectors (13,000 of them) – 

 – and the insulating panels – 

– together.

One finished panel on its side.

Detail of the interlocking edges.

Near their destination on the basement floor.

Next week:   Putting things together. 

The Cutting Edge

Fire and “Snow” (end of June, 2017)

A variety of cutting tools get the right result for our project.

The RJStegora team is tidy; packing up scraps before they accumulate.

Time-lapse video of slab insulation

Here is another video commissioned by our architect and shot by a professional photographer.  And you’ll see an after hours visitor leaving tracks on the insulation as mentioned in a previous post.

SaveSave

Time-lapse excavation

I botched my camera set up for time-lapse video, and so lost the first dozen or so days.  Fortunately, our architect commissioned a professional photographer to do some work, and managed to get part of the excavation captured.  Watch some amazing backhoe work in fast motion.