Dirt Removal And Retaining Wall Footing Excavation

It has been a long time coming, but they finally excavated for the retaining wall footings!

They removed alot of dirt from the back and regraded.  Not sure how we are going to get up to the newly elevated backyard, but I'm sure we will figure that out later.

They also installed the sill plate, complete with a vapor barrier.

Photos below:

End Table

The first end table is fully assembled and sanded.  We need to stain and varnish it, but it is in good shape.  It looks pretty good.

The only thing we are unhappy with is the soft close drawer glide.  We got it at Lowes and tried to upgrade from the simple, junky euro style slide, but it is not very smooth and you have to pull quite hard to unlock the spring that holds the drawer closed.

We are going to try an ikea version next.

Photos and model below:

Waterproofing Part 2

The rubber was applied yesterday, but the post is coming out today.  The rubber is hard to see and may not show up well in the photos, but you can see it and feel it.

The contractor doesn't think we need a drain tile along the exterior of the footing.  I think we should have it for good measure, but understand that we do have some difficulty running it out to daylight or into a drywell deep enough and far enough from the house to provide any real value.

We have a drain tile on the inside running to the sump so any water that does come up from underneath the footing should go directly to the sump and be pumped out.

Tomorrow they plan to backfill the walls and dig the footings for the patio wall and screened in porch.  With the panoramic photos below we can compare tomorrow to see how much of the giant dirt hill we lose in the backfill.

 

Waterproofing part 1

They applied asphalt to the foundation walls today as phase 1 of the waterproofing process.

Masons have gone home for the day

Wow. It's amazing the difference a few hours makes! No more cracks! (at least until it dries) the 2nd to last picture is the same spot on the wall as yesterday. Looks a lot different!

Good morning!

Well there's nothing like being woken up to the sound of concrete being poured 15 feet behind your head at 8am. Masons were here early. Vapor barrier was laid and concrete poured for the floor of the basement. The masons are still here at 1:45pm, I think they are fixing up the outside walls where the cracks are- will know for sure when I go out later. I have to say their ladders have evolved. I'm not sure where the 2x4 one came from, or how safe it is the way it's propped up there.

Concrete blocks finished!

Monday- they didn't start until 12ish and wrapped up around 6:30pm.

First impression: it's not as tall inside as I thought it would be, upon measuring its like 92-93 inches from the footer to the top of the concrete. Also not too happy with some of the joints, as seen in the pic below.

They did install a French drain which is a flexible black pipe back to a cistern, which is seen in the back corner in the pic.

Patio Wall Conduit Routing

Since the patio retaining wall will be under construction soon, I needed to figure out how many conduits we need to get into the wall and how the LED lights will be connected.

I have made the equipment selections (12V water proof, LED strips and drivers) and put together a couple of sketches to guide the installation.  http://www.flexfireleds.com/warm-white-ip68-waterproof-led-strip-light-reel/

The patio retaining wall is a total of about 51.5 linear feet on the inside, where the lights will be.  The LEDs come in reels of 16.4'.  So three reels will be slightly short of covering the entire wall.  We have some corners we need to navigate which will be easiest done with flexible wire strips and connectors, so we will probably make up most of the difference with these.

http://www.elementalled.com/waterproof-solder-connector-pair.html

The product literature indicates that 32' of LEDs can be connected together without a voltage drop problem.  The LEDs are about 48W / strip, so two strips is almost 100W of light.  So we can connect two strips together and then run third strip in parallel to this to get a total circuit wattage of 150W, requiring a 200W driver.  http://www.elementalled.com/12v-dimmable-driver.html

To minimize the number of conduits that need to be run in the wall, we can stub up between where the single strip and double strips are connected.  As cheap insurance, in case we want to change this later, we can run another conduit to the rough location where the two strips will be connected in case we want to separate them at any time.

We want to be able to dim these lights because they may be quite bright at full output.  This means we need drivers that are capable of dimming.  We also want to have them switched at two locations so 3 way switches will also be required.

We also have 3 GFI receptacles that we want to put in the wall, but this is pretty simple.


The design sketches are shown below, complete with product numbers for purchasing, when it is time.

Conduit Routing Plan

Patio Lighting Wiring Diagram

Detailed Patio Lighting Layout

Product Purchase List

Finishing Foundation Walls

The masons were here early on a Saturday morning!  2 masons arrived at about 8AM and two more arrived at 9AM when I was leaving to get, a new to me, guitar!

When I got home at about 5:30, there were still 3 masons here.  I confirmed that they are Polish.  They are killing it on the foundation wall and are just about complete.

When I got home they hadn't left a spot for the window and I was concerned, but a few minutes later I heard a saw and thought maybe they are cutting the window out!  And they were!  They have the anchors for the sill plate installed on the east and west corners, but not on the north / south walls.  I am not sure if they just ran out of time or what happened.

They tore back the siding to expose the existing sill plate, rim joist and subfloor to see how high they need to go.  The new rafters will be 2x12s instead of 2x8s so the bottom of the joists will not line up.

They filled the blocks (by the bucket full) that had reinforcing bars installed.  They have used most of the block now.

They still need to get the tile drain / perforated pipe installed by the footing.  These materials haven't been delivered yet.

Now for some photos:

Walking the planks is fun.  They are a bit rickety, but some big masons were on them so it must be safe. They lay them so that one side of the plank is under the previous plank, and on top of the next plank so they are weighted and don't fly up when you step on the edge of it.

Got some good overview shots from ontop of the cinderblocks that are left.

We need to make sure we strip back some of the earth around the existing foundation so that we can rubberize and seal the joint between the two foundation walls.

7 Courses

Three masons arrived around 7:30AM this morning and started pulling the forms off of the footings.  That was all I saw before leaving for work.

They were able to get 7 courses of block laid today.  It looks pretty good, though I did notice some joints without mortar, or where the mortar appears to have shrunk since they laid the block.  Wire racks were used between every other course and rebar was also used vertically.  I wonder if they will be filling the wall with concrete.

I am glad we will be getting the rubberized water proofing to seal up the cracks.

There is a box of anchor bolts that will be used to attach the sill plate,but I didn't see any lintels for the window, so I am not sure what the plan is for that.

Now for some photos!