big concrete box

hello again. we officially have a foundation! this bad boy is what will keep our house anchored to the ground should a big bad wolf ever cause us any trouble. in a nutshell the next steps after this are pouring the basement floor, and waterproofing the outside of the concrete. then framing begins in a week or two, with laying the floor trusses for the main floor. after a good amount of framing happens, a good amount of weight will then be sitting on the concrete, and walter will begin to backfill the gaps around the foundation with a mix of special backfill dirt, and some dirt dug out from the excavation.

below is what the approach will look like from the driveway - you can see the concrete peeking up from the hill.

next picture is a closeup of the top of the wall. these anchor bolts that were cast into the concrete is what the framing gets screwed into. you'll also notice that we stepped the wall in order to use a bottom-bearing open web truss joist system for the floor. which, to keep it simple, allows us to have a larger open span, and also bring the finished floor inside lower to ground level.


above you can see our primary electric inside the basement. walter (right) and the electrician are trying to figure out where to locate our main electrical panel. below is a picture of the well. bill and i got a little nervous when we noticed the electrical wires sharing a conduit with the well water pipe, until walter explained that the pump for the well uses a special water-proof wire.


and this is the septic tank where all the poop goes. all the waste water in the house from sinks, showers + toilets gets flushed into this tank. the solids collect at the bottom (ew), while the water rises to the top and spills out into a pipe carrying it to our leech field (in the distance), where it is distributed evenly over the whole field through a series of pipes, and evaporates. and because the water from the waste is so rich in nitrates, it's the perfect irrigation system for the lush wildflowers that will populate the field.

class dismissed.