Foundation Part 3, Walls!
So, there are various types of forms for concrete, but we went with a type that you can rent easily and doesn't require any cutting of forms. They fit together relatively easily and can be done easily by 2 people. I rented mine from Astrof Form Rentals in Snohomish, WA. They are very helpful. I was working by myself, however, and still was able to do it, but the 1 1/8 thick panels weigh a bloody ton and particularly on the taller walls required a lot of muscling into place, a lot of cursing, heavily scratched up arms, and did I mention cursing? The most time consuming part was tying together the rebar web. Significant amounts of steel reinforce the concrete on my site now (several tons, all hand carried around and lifted into place and tied at every junction with metal wire.)
Oh yeah, the concrete. Since I'm new at this and worried about moisture, I decided to go with a product called Caltite. It's an industrial concrete water and vapor-proofing compound. Concrete normally acts like a sponge, drawing moisture in. I live in the Pacific Northwest, Seattle to be specific, and we have a little bit of moisture. Locals are referred to as Mossbacks, and this isn't considered an insult. You get the idea. So, I paid double to get this additive mixed in to the concrete, along with various admixtures that reduce the possibility of cracking. However, I'm now really darn sure that moisture won't get through the walls, even the partially below-level walls and affect any wood cabinetry that is installed on the inside of them. This is a nice piece of mind.
Foundation Part 2, Footings!
Footing
The foundation was one of the parts of the project that I had initially planned on contracting out entirely. Partially due to the architects' fees and partially because I'd done enough reading to feel comfortable with trying to do our foundation I ended up doing much of our concrete work. There are three main parts to our concrete foundations. The first is the footing, a 2-5 foot wide, 1 foot thick chunk of concrete that runs around the edge of the house, under all interior walls, and around the edge of the garage. On top of that are poured the walls. In the front of our house, acting to partially retain the hillside, is a 4-foot high wall. Our garage sits at alley level, about 10 feet below the ground floor level of our house. Since it's buried into the hillside it has a 9 foot back wall and 7 foot side walls made out of insanely reinforced concrete (#5 bars running both ways every 6".) After the walls are done comes the slabs for the floors. This last stage is the only one I contracted out because I wanted a pretty floor! We're leaving the concrete exposed in the house and the garage.
If you are doing your own concrete work, it can take quite a while if you have not done it before. It's worth hiring a day laborer or two. I ended up having to extend the rental time considerably, doubling the rental price. I think I might have broken even versus just buying 1 1/8 inch plywood. Their sheets have a plastic or resin coating on one side that allows the panels to release easily, but I imagine that just heavy-duty plywood coated with a lot of releasing agent (oil) would also work. Either way, for around $5-6K in rentals and rebar, and around $7200 in concrete I did a job that had been priced out close to $40K by several bids.
So, the first step are the footings, and are layed out pretty basically. I had a non-rectangular foundation, and so this took a bit longer. I also was working with my wife's uncle who is a former carpenter and a self-proclaimed NON-concrete guy. To make a long story short, I ended up wasting a hell of a lot of time discussing various potential ways to do the foundation instead of simply going with the concise easy ways I'd read about. The back and forth, wasted time, disagreements, errors, etc. at this stage made it pretty clear to me that I would be better off on my own. There was no point having both of us steadily get more and more pissed at eachother when we generally got along very well. The moral of the story is that it's probably not a good idea to work with family, but if you do make sure that one person is acknowledged as being in charge. Too many chefs in a kitchen ruins the soup. Or, there's lots of ways to get something done, but ultimately you just need to pick one and do it well.
After finishing the plumbing, I was able to go ahead and pour the footings. Because of our site, we had to use a telescoping boom pump truck to get the concrete into the forms. It's a pretty impressive piece of equipment, and watching someone carefully park the truck and unload the boom carefully under the power lines and up to the site was almost worth the price of having them come out. We got our concrete from Glacier NW and rented the pump truck from Brundage-Bone. I would highly recommend Brundage-Bone for pumping work. Highly professional, the driver actually helped us with the concrete work instead of just standing around and running the truck, and provided a lot of advice that I asked for and accepted willingly. I can't tell you how good it felt at the end of the day seeing the first stage of concrete finished! If you do this yourself, make sure that you have LOTS of help. I had 5 people and it was almost enough!
Foundation!
So, as it turns out, it's preferable to get the main sewer line installed BEFORE pouring a foundation. The timeline from the books I'd read had the groundwork plumbing done AFTER the foundation, but I realized that that would mean digging out under the footings at odd angles, and it would be far easier to just have the sewer line put in place before the pour. Unfortunately this all clicked together in my head AFTER the footing frames were almost done, the night before the pour. This was the first of many delays on the concrete pour date.
So, I decided to learn how to be a plumber. Specifically a sewer-line installer. I followed the recommended slope of 1/8 to 1/4 inch per foot and just worked my way back, digging the trench by hand. This was relatively more tedious because I often had to work around the forms, but it didn't take absurdly long. I think it was a full day of digging. I knew that I wanted cast iron pipe for the upstairs plumbing because it is essentially silent versus ABS or PVC which seems to amplify the sound of toilets flushing. For some reason, it made sense to me to continue the cast iron under the slab and out to where we met up with the clay sewer line that runs out the main in the street. The reasoning is that some of the line would run through the concrete and the cast iron would resist cracking if/when the foundation settled at all over time. This added greatly to the cost, since ABS is darn near free and cast iron is absurdly expensive. Oh well. I get the thing layed out and I'm pretty proud of it. The fittings are all rubber gasket fittings with two metals bands that have a worm-drive tightening mechanism. It went together quickly, even on the sections of pipe that I had to cut (rent a pipe-cutter!) and was essentially leak free. The inspector came out, and turned out to not be the regular inspector. He took one look at it, impressively holding water with a ten foot water column of pressure on it, and all he said was "that's nice, but it's no good." It turns out that the rubber fittings are only for outside use and what I needed are metal-armored fittings. So, I go back to the plumbing supply store and spend another couple of hundred dollars on heavy duty solid metal armored fittings. I slice my hand open several times, and there's something about that armoring layer that if the pipe isn't lined up perfectly it leaks like mad. Thinking that this can't be right, I called the inspection help line open between 7:30 and 8:30 am in the hope of getting an inspector. It turns out that there is an in-between fitting that has a crinkly thinner metal armoring that behaves a lot more like the ones that I installed in the first place. I put these on and was good to go. Until the next inspection.
The regular inspector came out and took one look and said "That's nice, but where's your backwater valve?" Now, I'm not a plumber and have never heard of a backwater valve. And after several weeks of plumbing (during which I'm not pouring concrete) I'm really ready to be done with this. So, it turns out that since I'm down the hill from the street, the manhole vents in the street lay above my ground level plumbing. In the event of a flood, sewer "water" would normally overflow at the manholes, or through any plumbing that's lower than it. Well, that would be my downstairs bathroom. And that would be downright foul and evil. So, while I was crushed, I did go out and try to find a supplier for a backwater valve. A backwater valve is basically a large check-valve that has a mechanical cover that can be opened and cleaned out. This clean-out is required by code and meant that somewhere along the sewer line I not only had to put this valve in, but have a mechanical box that would go through the slab and allow me to access it. The only possible place ended up being where the downstairs sink cabinet would be. Inside the cabinet would be the access. Oh well, it's not perfect, but finally the plumbing passed!
Now, on the the footing pour!
