July 15 2008 - 1st half of Logs are Delivered

After visiting the log company months ago, we'd unfortunately had to put off delivery a little longer than we'd liked. Finally, we had the foundation completed and could give them the go ahead to deliver. There were to be two deliveries spaced out a few weeks to give us time to use the first ones.

So, Tuesday morning July 15th, the log truck had arrived from Redding, CA. The truck had actually arrived late the night before and the driver was planning to sleep in the truck to be ready for unloading first thing in the morning.

We all woke up early, packed coffee and went over there to see the logs unloaded, a very exciting day.

The driver was still sleeping when we arrived, but quickly awoke and came over to discuss the game plan. He told us it took 20 minutes just to get around the corner to get on our street the night before. He seemed a bit concerned about the tight parameters for the unloading at first, but after some discussion, he said "OK" with confidence.

He climbed high into his self loader seat and started grabbing logs. He'd been concerned about a tree next door that he'd have to get around and once he started, I could see why. But, he manuvered around it and had no trouble stacking the logs where we discussed.

He'd place it down and then reposition to slid it up the hill. They would plow the dirt a bit as they were pused up, but then he'd put it down and it would come up again out of the dirt.

Once on a roll, he could unload and drop a log in a minute and a half. So after about 45 minutes, we had 29 logs on the property. There would be just enough room along side for Jeff to drive the truck up and down as well. Good news. So, now to figure out how to drag them up to the house site... To be continued...

July 10th - August 8th 2008 - Building the Basement Walls

We visited an insulated concrete form (ICF) distributor in Orange County over a year ago, beginning to look into using this system called ARXX. ICFs have been around awhile, but still aren't widely used. They are becoming increasingly popular though for their many advantages over other building methods. Not only are they very "green," being very energy efficient, they are also super strong and fire proof, and are very easy to work with. Once we had them engineered into the plans, Jeff took a 1 day class on how to build with them in San Clemente, CA.

Once we had the foundation completed, Jeff ordered the forms and they were delivered shortly thereafter. The great part was that the owner of the distribution company delivers them himself and sticks around for a few hours to get you started. He had to deliver in two trips, helping each time and is even coming back a third time to help and answer any questions.

After measuring and remeasuring, Jeff was starting to build walls in no time.

It was so exciting to see walls taking shape!

July 23rd update -

Although it has taken a little bit longer than expected, Jeff has made good progress stacking the ICFs. Of course its not quite as easy as just stacking them up when you have imperfect footings and narrow trenches to work with. He has had lots of work to do measuring and cutting shims to make the walls level and straight. It also hasn't helped that we have had our share of monsoon rainstorms that have interrupted work and caused mud slides.

Exciting to see door openings take shape.

Jeff has started building door frames at the house. I helped attach the bracings to the walls which took us about 3 hours. These are used to attach scaffolding and function as supports to keep the walls straight. Seems easy enough, but it has to stay clean where the walls meet the concrete footing and its tough climbing down in the trenches without pushing dirt down in.

So, now to build the scaffolding, finish stacking the walls, and get it inspected.

July 30th Update:

The time came to build scaffolding before the walls could go any higher. A little challenging with uneven ground to work with.

The ICF guy, Russ came back again over the weekend to help Jeff and make sure everything was on track. It worked out great being able to offer them our friends' (the Fejtek's) cabin so he and his wife could enjoy a weekend away and be here to work. Door frames started to fit into place.

Finally, the walls were basically up with only one more course of blocks to go. Yikes there is going to be a lot of stone to lay over the walls.

So, just a bit to finish up before getting it inspected by the city and the engineer and get the ok to pour concrete.

To be continued...

June - July 8th 2008 - Building the Foundation

Its hard to believe its already July! Well, a series of delays slowed progress on the foundation and its been a frustrating month, but in the end, all is well.

After the graders finished digging the trenches we had good news. It looked like since there weren't any major boulders to deal with as we had feared, we could dig out the whole basement level and add a significant amount of square footage. It hadn't made sense to engineer the plans for this until we knew if it was possible so, now the plans had to be adjusted by the engineer.

Jeff discussed the changes with the engineer and he said no problem he'd have it done soon. Great! Well, of course, his idea of soon and our is not quite the same. After he finally did the work there were a few more adjustments required by the city, back and forth, and waiting, which became very time consuming.

Eventually, we had the go ahead to build the footings. After contemplating building them ourselves in efforts to get things done asap, we decided to hire a local concrete contractor to build the foundation. Once starting on it, he was done within a day or two.

Now to pass inspection by the city...

Well, we failed the first footing inspection, with amounts of rebar and depth of trenches being not quite right. Jeff was given a list of things to fix and he got busy buying more rebar, digging and adjusting things. I was able to help one day, tieing rebar and measuring, as we worked to get the back wall footing to measure just right.

Finally, we passed the second inspection, got the plans stamped, and had the go ahead to pour concrete. Of course now, we had to work into the concrete contractor's schedule, which ate up another week and a half, but July 8th, the day finally arrived to pour concrete!

Wow, we have a foundation! Next, building the basement walls using insulated concrete forms (ICFs).