Wrapping up house framing and major concrete work

Here is a lot of progress from late Sept into Oct.  Last day of framing was Oct 24, when the crew finally packed up and left.  I will admit, it was a bit daunting at first to not have them around anymore, but progress has been marching on since (future posts...)

 Here is the main framing complete from the front of the house.  The third window on the upper story was still covered by Tyvek in these photos.  Posts holding up the front porch roof are temporary as the footings were not in at this point.  That got taken care of during the basement floor pour (below).

 

As they were getting near the end of framing, I was working on slab insulation and getting the tubing in.  Got that wrapped up about Oct 15th.

This is the garage area, with the basement of the house in back.  Garage manifold first:

Here is the manifold for the basement with the sump basket next to it:

On Oct 18th, the concrete guys showed up to pour the basement.  We had a cold snap around then and it was getting down below freezing.  This is not good for concrete, but it still was not too bad at this point as it had just turned cold very recently.  Here is the basement slab pour.  They wheel barrowed everything from the garage doors back with just 2 guys doing that while 3-5 others were spreading, screeding, and working the slab.

Final view late in the day after they were all done finishing:

Being so cold, we stayed off it for a couple days, and then were still treading pretty lightly for a few more days.  Having the insulation underneath helped it cure better, no doubt, as the heat could not escape that direction.

Due to the temps turning cold, they also wanted to get the post footings in place right then too, so they did that.  They had a monster 24" auger on a bobcat and used that to drill the holes, and then fill them with the remaining concrete from the slab pour.  They had just enough to top off the footing forms.

A week after that, the framers finished up just before they left by moving the temp posts over to the footings.  They are still temp posts, but are now sitting on footings dug down to undisturbed ground ~8' deep, so they should hold well.  Next year I will get finished posts to finalize that.

We also had a deck over part of the garage (the kitchen deck) that needed a poured slab.  This required a lot of prep work including 2" of insulation, fiberboard underlayment and EPDM rubber roofing membrane to waterproof and insulate it.  The concrete company apparently thought they had me over a barrel and wanted over $10/sq ft to do this small slab (2-3x normal rates).  I first told them OK, in case I couldn't find another option, but then found a guy through a co-worker's relatives that was experienced and liked doing stuff like this on the side.  He did it, I bought the concrete, and saved over 60% over what the main concrete outfit wanted.  Now, I needed a big outfit to handle the walls and slab, as it took serious manpower and equipment for that, and I thought they were reasonable there and did a good job overall, but they were obviously sticking it to me on this little slab, so lesson learned.

Here is that 8'x24' deck poured on Nov 8.  Just in time before it got too cold.  I had to cover and insulate it the second night as it was getting into the low 20's and into the teens even, which was very cold for this early.  It would have helped if it stayed decent for another few days, but the weather has been messing with me all through this project, so why stop now?

Rebar and forms ready for the pour:

All done:

I've left it covered since then, as it has turned winter on us...

Next up is windows and doors, and interior framing.