Excavation Through Framing

A lot has happened since I last posted! Last time I posted, we had just cleared the trees to prep the lot for digging. We have excavated and installed the septic, excavated the house, formed the foundation walls, perimeter drain/ dampproofing, installed underground plumbing/radon, poured the floor, and started framing! It has been a busy 2 months or so!

This is the septic going in. We had to use an “advanced treatment system” because of the size of the watershed requirements. There is a concrete tank, treatment tank (green), and leach field. This is now all buried.

After Septic came excavating the house, this took about a week. We ran into some bedrock and had to blast! Also trenched out the water line from the street to the house, and had to blast a bunch there as well.

Excacating the house
Water Line prepped from street to house. Then the water company will bring it from this point to the main in the center of road.

Next came foundation! Footings first, had to have engineer and county inspection on these before pouring!


Footings being formed
Footings stripped and ready

Next came foundation walls! Again had to have county and engineer inspections.

forms for foundation walls.

We had a perimeter drain and dampproofing where grade was above livable space. Originally we did not think we needed it on the walkout side, but there was a bunch of water pooling up on that side from snowmelt and the engineer recommended that we have it there too just in case!

dampproofing
perimeter drain
We also had slab insulation, 2″ xps around the areas where slab was less than 12″ below grade.

After about 7 days cure time, we backfilled around the foundation walls, with a 4″ layer of gravel atop. Next rough plumbing went in.

underground plumbing going in

After underground plumbing and underground radon went in, we were ready to pour our floors! That was a busy day!

pouring the slab
pouring the deck footings at the same time as slab
Foundation and slab all done!

We had to caulk around cracks and joints. This makes sure radon works passively. Basically there is a pipe that goes from under slab to roof. Air and radon flows through the gravel under slab and into the pipe. Caulking joints makes sure it doesnt leak out anywhere else and goes to the pipe instead.

caulking for passive radon design

Then, framing started. And, all of a sudden, a House Is Born!!!!

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