The foundation guys showed up today and got most of our forms in place to pour concrete on Friday.
One issue that came up today was the floor of our root cellar… Our footings are huge and cover most of it except for a small sliver. Everything that I’ve read about root cellars says that your vegetables like high humidity and that the best way to achieve that is a floor that is open to the ground. So this is probably something that we could have dealt with more elegantly earlier, why it is an issue now though is that the forms for one wall were put in slightly the wrong place. Our engineer was actually a little sloppy with a dimension that turned out to be misleading causing the root cellar to be four inches too narrow, closing up that opening in the floor. This is going to be sorted out tomorrow morning. The wall will have to be moved, because the original plan was for a narrow (4′-0″ wide) cellar, so every inch is important. We may end up with an open slot down the middle of the floor like originally planned, we may however end up with a continuous concrete floor with openings to the ground through a series of sleeves.
Also, Katherine ran across a great quote today: ”The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land” - Abraham Lincoln.
So exciting! We love being able to see the progress that is being made.
Was there a big cost difference with the rip-out forms vs. in-place foam block forms that don’t need to be ripped out? What’s the rainwater retention requirement in Portland?
We didn’t actually look into the cost of foam block forms. We like the look of exposed concrete, plus we have a root cellar that requires cold earth to make it work. The rest of the basement is unconditioned as well.
For the rainwater retention… There isn’t a retention requirement, but we are required to manage all rainwater coming off of impervious surfaces somehow. We’re doing it with a soakage trench in the back that will infiltrate everything that comes off of the roof.