almost out of the ground...

this week, the formwork for our foundation walls was nearly complete. all that's left to do is install the anchor bolts within the formwork. the anchor bolts are cast into the foundation and then the wood framing is screwed into them, thereby anchoring the house into the ground. what you see above are metal forms, shored up by the long 2x's leaning in. these 2x's have spring-loaded adjusters (i don't know the techncial term for these) at the ends, so that the walls can be very precisely adjusted and straightened. inside the metal forms is our network of steel rebar, specified by our engineer. and by the looks of this network, i say bring on the extreme winds because this baby is going to outlast the cockroaches.

above is our footing drain. this is a perforated pipe that runs around the perimeter of the foundation to drain water away from the house.

this is a view of the house site from the back yard. the finished floor will be just below where that top 2x is located (about 12" below the top of those forms). once it's backfilled (after the framing goes up), and we move some earth around, the finished floor inside will ideally be at the same level as the yard.


and this is the view from the driveway, facing the garage door. not really all that informative at this time, but i just thought it was a cool picture.

footings

don't have much time to post now, but i'd thought i'd get some of these up before our next post, which will hopefully be sunday night, when we will have full foundation walls! these are our footings, which is what the walls are attached to through what is called a keyhole (a groove cast into the footings, and this steel rebar sticking out of the footings.

that's billy, checking things out in the distance, with bill our mason, who works with another guy named bill.

and this is our work permit. woop woop.