The theme of the week, for me anyway, was footings and foundations.
During the day at work we stacked styrofoam blocks at the elder housing project. These will get filled with concrete on Monday to form the foundation walls for the rest of the houses. We're building 2 separate duplexes, so everything gets done twice.
The foam blocks have these plastic spacers in them that allow you to place rebar along them. They click together very similarly to lego. Apparently they're pretty expensive, but you save in both labour and insulation costs. At first I was doubtful of any labour savings, but as we figured out the process we stacked them up pretty quickly, building the entire foundation wall forms in a day.
I had a day and a half off from work as a result of not being able to get a cement delivery before Monday. I used the time off to hand mix about 500 wheelbarrow loads of cement to build and pour our own footings for what we're calling the "West Wing". It'll be a 16x16' addition to the house which will contain the bathroom, laundry room, entrance, and some storage.
I'll give them a few days to cure, then start putting together the beams, fastening the floor joists, and eventually screwing and and gluing the plywood subfloor. We need the West Wing to get to a lockup stage before we can do any major electrical work as that is where our panel will live.
2 comments:
I can't believe what you two have done in such a short time. I guess Rachelle must wonder if maybe she should have moved to Hornby Island a lot sooner. Good luck Rachelle. Everything looks great and it was the right decision to move to Hornby Island.
Sorry I forgot to sign the previous comment.
Aunt Anne
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