04_2012 Concrete Pour and some Backyard Drainage Work

While we were in Joshua Tree (a few more of those blogs will be coming), the concrete was poured at the house. Happily Chris took some photos of it. Check out the size of the cement truck in the yard. It certainly explains where that chunk of Phlox went. :)  Pretty darn cool truck.

Here is how the rebar in the new addition is tied into the existing foundation.  It doesn't seem that this foundation is going anywhere.

This is looking down in the walls of the frame before the cement went in. There is a box that serves as a spacer  at the bottom. This allows there to be airspace between the walls of the foundation and the ground. The Helical (sp?) piers are what is really holding the house and addition. This space allows the ground to swell and settle without pushing on the house.

Here is the last view of the framing for the foundation. The cement truck dropped cement into these walls.

Lots of noise! Pretty cool - wish we could have watched it.

Now that the walls are poured, the drainage system along the walls is put in place.

And you can see the black?  That is the waterproofing of the walls of the foundation.

This next picture is actually of the backyard. For some reason, the yard was staying totally soggy when it rained. The crew dug up the yard to expose the sump pump pipe.What a sloppy mess especially considering we are in the midst of a nasty drought.

You can see that they extended the sump pump pipe to a corner of the yard. Here they dug down to more than 4' of depth (beneath the clay) and added a ton of gravel/rocks. This allows somewhere for the water to escape. There is now a sump pit there with a lid on it. I'll be looking for a rock or flower pot to cover it with.

New connection from the sump pipe to the extending pipe. Hopefully this gets rid of the sogginess of the yard and better feeds the other plants out back.

The windows and sky lights arrived today. Tomorrow the lumber arrives. Wednesday the framing begins. Then we are off to the races. Kitchen cabinets come on the 10th. The interior chaos is coming!

Free Blog Counter