Work on the foundation has continued to move forward over the last few weeks. Though the process has been much slower than I would like due to record breaking amounts of rain we have been having in my state, I am still doing as much as I can to keep things moving forward. The two largest projects I have completed recently have been rocks and rebar.
Rocks
The next step after the foundation footer trenches were done was to get the middle of the concrete slab area prepped. To do this I first needed to put vapor barrier over the dirt and then a layer of rock. The vapor barrier was not too difficult. The wind tried to grab it a few times, but I was able to get it all assembled and in place in under two hours.
I determined that to get the depth of rock I would need for the area of my foundation slab I would need about 6 tons of rock. There is a great rock company in this area that delivers rock for driveways and construction projects. Their trucks can carry about 15 tons per load. My dad has been wanting to add more rock to the driveway at their house so we decided to go ahead and get a full truck of 15 tons delivered and have about half poured out at my place and half placed on my mom and dad's driveway. The truck driver we got was wonderful and was able to get the pile right next to the trenches!
I was a little intimidated by the size of the rock pile at first. The width of the trenches made it impossible to get any equipment onto the slab site so all of the rock was going to have to be shoveled and put in place by hand. This is another situation where I have my amazing family to thank for the ability to get this done in a timely manner. My mom, dad, and I started shoveling rock around 1:30 pm and we finished up smoothing and filling in the rock layer around 5 pm. Moving 6ish tons of rock by hand is not for the faint of heart (literally don't do this if you have any heart condition!) but with help it can be accomplished!
The left picture below is the pile of rock when it was delivered and on the right is after we had all the rock spread out over the vapor barrier. Please forgive the lighting in these photos - it was a bit cloudy the day we did this which was great for keeping us cool while working but not so great for pictures!
Rebar
After rock was done it was time for rebar. I took a quick trip to the local home improvement store for supplies and then I got to work bending and placing rebar. This process actually went much smoother than I anticipated. I have never worked with rebar before and when I first started trying to bend the pieces using a three-point rebar bender I had gotten I was having some issues. I got it figured out though and in no time at all I was bending rebar like a pro (probably not, but oh well). I got all my rebar spaced out in a 2ft by 2ft grid and then used wire to tie it all together. I actually quite enjoyed this. I got a little spinney tool that helps twist the wire and I just went around the whole place looping it all together. I then used some brick chunks my parents had leftover from a project to put underneath some of the places where the rebar pieces crossed each other to hold the entire grid off of the rock layer a little bit. This way when the concrete gets poured the rebar will float inside the concrete layer. All total getting the rebar grid put together took me about 12 hours over a two-day period.
The next step in the process is to get forms built and secured so that concrete can be poured. At this time I genuinely don't know when this is going to happen. We have had so much rain in the last few days that the footer trenches have completely flooded. The ground is also extremely soggy so even if I bailed the water out of the footers it would still be impossible to get a heavy concrete truck out to the site without it getting stuck. It is a bit frustrating. My state is known for having droughts and the year I decide to build a house we have record breaking rain. I am trying to stay positive though! Being able to build my house from scratch with my own two hands is something that not a lot of people ever get to do. As much as I would love to have this house done and built I am also trying to soak in the experience and enjoy this process as much as possible - even the delays!
Hopefully I will have a concrete update for you soon! Until then I hope everyone is having a great summer!
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