More floor framing

(This post was written yesterday, but Blogger/Picassa were having problems and prevented me from posting it last evening.)

Although the weather has been hot and humid, we keep working. And, we’re making progress.

On Wednesday, Jon had to leave early because he was needed at home. I had to run an errand into town which took longer than it was supposed to. After I returned, my dad offered to help me work on the house. We worked a little before lunch and then another couple of hours after lunch and accomplished a fair bit.

We continued framing the floor on the west side of the house, working out from the root cellar. I had to figure how to go about it since I only had enough 2x8s to use as floor joists for one section. There are three sections from framing for the floor above the root cellar toward the front of the house: the mudroom, porch, and the summer kitchen.

I decided to use the 2x8s for the floor joists of the summer kitchen (that’s what was left of the 2x dimensional lumber I bought at the beginning of the week). They were mostly 10’ long boards, and the span is approximately 9 feet. So, these worked well. They wouldn’t work in the mudroom section since the span there is 11 feet.

We started by putting beams from the mudroom foundation wall to the piers on this end of the house (two piers). Because of how the floor will be framed, I chose to use 6x8 beams between the piers. We ran a 6x8 beams from the first pier back to the foundation wall in order to ensure that the two longer beams I had would be long enough.

I designed the piers to be about 2 inches higher in elevation than the foundation wall. There is some variation to be handled with wood shims. However, when we laid the first beam from the corner of the mudroom foundation wall to the first pier, the level showed that it was level. The next beam between the two piers was low at the corner. Then, the 4x6 from the kitchen foundation to the pier showed the pier being high. This was confusing.

We checked things with a line level, but it just wasn’t accurate enough to determine how level the beams were. So, I used a straight cedar 2x4 I had with the four foot level on top. With this setup we were able to determine that the first pier was 1.75 inches higher than the foundation wall – more like it was supposed to be. So, I notched the bottoms of the beams, and amazingly, they came out level (the crown in the first beam accounts for most of the discrepancy that exists).

We worked the beams out to level before hanging floor joists for the summer kitchen. These went fairly quickly. They hung on the 2x10 box on the kitchen foundation wall on the inside and nailed into the 6x8 on the outside.

After framing this section, we hung two 6x8 beams from the house out to the outside edge. We’ll hang 2x6 floor joists out from these beams to the 2x10 on the edge of the floor above the root cellar, to the box on the mudroom foundation wall, and to the 6x8 at the edge of the summer kitchen floor framing (four sections of 2x6 floor joists all together). These 2x6 floor joists will only span 5.5 to 6 feet. So, they ought to be strong enough.

At this point, it was 5:00pm and we were at a good stopping point. Jon will probably be here to work tomorrow. We’ll continue with more floor framing then.

 

  

Ready to begin the next phase of construction

It’s been hot and sweaty weather here for the last couple of weeks, and the forecast is that it will stay the same through next week. Still, there’s work to be done. So, I accept sweat as a way of life.

We’ve made some good progress this week. Except for a few small places on the walls where I want to apply a second coat of surface bonding cement, the foundation work is done. We finished installing the sill plate all the way around today.

It took longer to bolt the sill plate on than I expected. There was a fair bit of time spent milling the boards, of course. I guess if I just went to the building supply store and bought lumber for the job, it would be quicker. It would also cost more and wouldn’t be ‘custom’ like what we have now.

After we finished bolting on the last sill board, we laid a few 4x6s on the porch piers at the front of the house. These will go all the way around the porch eventually with 6x8 beams coming out from the foundation wall to the piers which will support the floor joists for the porch.

 

We’ll be framing the deck of the porch next week. I don’t know how quickly this phase of the project will take. I usually underestimate the amount of time it takes to do each part. You’d think I’d learn by now, but I’m still an optimist in terms of how much I can actually accomplish in any given day.

Sill plates

On Monday, Jon and I coated the kitchen crawl space wall with surface bonding cement. We also coated the small section inside the root cellar that I didn’t take care of last summer. I also finished stuccoing the piers for the porch at the back of the house. We had these jobs finished by lunchtime. So after lunch, we started milling boards for the sill plates. That didn’t go so well because my Husqvarna 3120xp chainsaw (the powerhead for the sawmill) wasn’t running properly. After milling one log, we completed a couple of other jobs unrelated to the house.

This morning, we returned to milling. I checked out the saw yesterday in preparation, cleaning the air filter, fuel filter, and muffler. It ran better, but still doesn’t have the power it should. I believe the fuel filter is the culprit. I’ll be ordering a new one.

After we had several of the boards milled, we hauled them to the house to begin bolting them to the foundation and to see what we still needed to mill. There are four different thicknesses which we’re milling. All of the sill plates are cedar.

We put down aluminum flashing on top of the block wall and then bolt the cedar board on top of that. We were able to complete the sill plates around the root cellar and on the west side of the house. We put flashing across the front before we had to quit today. We’ll work on it again Friday.

 

 

 

 

Nearing the end of foundation work

The foundation has taken a lot of work and time. I didn’t realize how much before I started on the root cellar and crawl space walls. We’re nearing the end of this phase of the construction, though.

With the footers poured for the kitchen crawl space wall and the porch piers, we were able to get blocks laid last week. The kitchen wall was dry stacked. We should be able to coat it with surface bonding cement this week. There has been a delay in obtaining a few bags of SBC because the local place no longer keeps it in stock. Dry stacking does seem to go fairly quickly, and it’s easy to do, including surfacing the walls.

I mortared the blocks for the porch piers. I was going to dry stack them, too, but I wanted to try mortaring them. They turned out pretty well, I think. We took time to make sure the outer edges were in line and that the piers were level and plumb.

On Friday we added some thinner blocks to the top of the piers (which were constructed with 12” x 16” blocks) to bring them to the proper height all the way around. The solid blocks in 2”, 2.5”, and 4” are 8”x16”. So, we scored and broke them to 12” to fit on the outside edges of the 12” blocks. Then, we mortared them in place.

I want the piers to match the foundation walls, but I didn’t want to pay for surface bonding cement (Quickwall costs somewhere in the neighborhood of $23 per bag). So, I bought some mortar/stucco mix to coat them with. We started stuccoing them on Friday.

The stucco mix works a little differently than surface bonding cement. I think the SBC is easier to apply. But, after a couple of piers, Jon and I were beginning to get the hang of it. We have only a few more to do on one side and the back of the house. These are the shortest piers. So, they shouldn’t take too long to finish on Monday.

We also added a few more j-bolts to anchor the sill plate to the foundation wall. We ought to be able to mill the plates to the right thicknesses this week and get them put on. Then, we’ll progress to framing the porch.

We’re looking forward to beginning a new phase in the construction.

Footers and piers

With the return of warmer and drier weather, I’m able to get back to working on the house. There are a lot of different projects vying for my attention, but the urge to get this house done so that we can move in by next summer is upon me. I really want it finished. It is within reach.

I have worked on a related project during the last few weeks: a cistern to catch rain water. The cistern is located in the shed section of the garage which is near our current home which is at the top of the hill. We’ll harvest rain water off of the garage roof. I’ll run a 1.5 inch water line down to the house which is 50 to 60 feet lower in elevation. This should provide at least some of our water pressure. Later, I will build a cistern to harvest rain water off of the house, too. We will not hook up to city water.

We also will not hook up to the grid for electricity. We are currently using a solar electric system that I put together and installed. When we move into the new house, I’ll re-install the system for it.

We also decided to not put in a septic system. We’ll use sawdust toilets and compost it. You can read about this system in the Humanure Handbook. It’s simple and effective. It turns a waste into a resource.

Sometime at the end of last year, we changed one part of our house design. The kitchen extend out from the frame into part of what would have been the porch near the corner of the house. It will extend out 9 feet and be 12 feet wide. This will make it a non-traffic area and allow there to be a door off of the main kitchen into what will be the summer kitchen.

In order to affect this change in the design, I have to build a block wall to enclose the crawlspace under the kitchen. The space under summer kitchen will not be enclosed with block. The summer kitchen will actually be an enclosed portion of the porch on the corner toward the barn. I will probably use some cement board to enclose underneath it later on.

Last week, I started digging for the footer for the kitchen crawlspace wall and for the footers that will be under the piers that will support the porch. Actually, I had help. My good friend Jon is working with me two days a week this summer, and he helped with the digging. Having Jon working with me keeps me more focused and on task because I want to be sure and have plenty to keep him busy on the days that he’s here.

We finished excavating with shovels for all the footers last Monday. On Wednesday when he came over, I was ready with 100 80-pound bags of concrete mix that I bought on Tuesday. It probably wouldn’t have cost any more to have the local concrete company send a truck out, but with the landscaping changes I made last summer/fall, there really wasn’t any way that the truck could have gotten close enough to pour the footer.

I do have an electric powered concrete mixer that I bought several weeks ago in anticipation of the material that will need mixed. It’s one that Lowes offered, and it’s worked quite well the times we’ve used it. On Wednesday, we set it up near the house (powered by my generator since I had the temporary power disconnected) and began mixing. Two bags fit in it quite well. It took 54 bags to complete the footer for the kitchen.

For the porch pier footers, we moved the mixer so that it set right over each hole. We mixed three bags at a time which is all that would fit in the mixer. It had no problem mixing that amount of material, and the generator never complained. After mixing, we dumped the concrete directly in the hole and moved to the next one.

Everything went very smoothly, and we finished all of the concrete work by the end of the day. We had two bags left over which will be used elsewhere later on.

This week Jon wasn’t able to be here on Monday. So, I worked on my own. On Friday I had purchased some 12” concrete blocks for the porch piers. They didn’t have any surface bonding cement in stock – I’ll need that for surfacing the kitchen crawlspace wall.

I put strings up to make sure that I would have everything lined up properly.  Then, I set out the blocks for the kitchen wall in preparation of mortaring the first course onto the footer. After that, I mortared each block, making sure it was level.

Once I finished the first course for the kitchen, I measured for the porch piers to make sure they would be properly situated on their footers. While doing this I discovered something interesting in a very good way: the distance from the corner of the porch to the block wall for the kitchen was the same distance as from the rear corner of the porch to the root cellar wall – 33.5 feet. I was kind of amazed because the way it’s put together, there was no reliable way to ensure that it would be so.

I was able to get all of the first blocks for the porch piers mortared into place and level yesterday. Today, after returning a piece of equipment to a friend, I started stacking blocks. I started with one corner  of the porch. After stacking the blocks, I decided that I would mortar the blocks together. I was going to dry stack them. I’ll stucco the piers later so they will match the rest of the foundation walls.

By the time I quit this afternoon/evening, I had all of the piers across the front of the house mortared. These are the ones with the most blocks. It shouldn’t take too long to mortar the blocks for the other piers tomorrow. Jon should be here tomorrow, and I’ll have him start dry-stacking the blocks for the kitchen.

I hope that the work can go fast and furious from here on. That should make it possible to keep the blog updated much more regularly.

Winter 2010 update – back to work soon

I guess it’s about time that I update my blog. I’ve been devoting time to my other blog which focuses on some of the things we’re doing on our homestead. Also, there’s not been much happening on the house, so I’ve had little to write about here. That will change now.

Late last summer I hired a pond dug near the house. I wrote a series of posts about that project which you can read here. The pond project was related to the house project since it’s near the house, and we will enjoy year-round views of it from the house.

Constructing the pond provided opportunity and material to do a little landscaping in front of the house. The slope there was steeper than I wanted it to be, and I’ve wanted to put some fill there to make it slope more gradually toward the garden. I borrowed my friend Mike’s backhoe to complete some of the excavation on the pond and moved a lot of dirt in front of the house.

I used my 1979 F250 with a dump bed to transport dirt from the pond excavation to the site in front of the house. I spread the dirt with a blade on the back of my tractor. There was enough dirt to taper out the slope nicely toward the garden. I sowed some fescue seed on it afterwards last fall. The grass sprouted and got off to a good start.

Following are a few photos taken during the dirt moving process and photos taken at the time I seeded the grass.

 

Since then, I’ve done very little work on house. I did get some beech logs drug out of a friend’s woods and staged to have them milled. The milling of them has been postponed because of the weather. It’s a bit wet and muddy over there right now. Previously when we were going to mill them, it stayed below freezing for two weeks which resulted in frozen logs. Another friend is going to bring his Woodmizer over to mill them, and he was concerned about how cold it was that day and how hard the frozen logs would be on his blades. So, we’re still trying to reschedule. The lumber from the logs will be used mainly for the porch floor.

We changed another aspect of our floorplan. We’re going to extend space out on what would have been the porch on the front west side of the house. This ‘bump out’ will be 12 feet wide and 9 feet deep (extending out from and between the corner and first post). This will make kitchen space. In fact, most of the kitchen will be in this space and the dining area will move over to where the kitchen was going to be before. We’ll also be enclosing a summer kitchen off this space on the corner of the porch.

So, I have to dig for and pour footers for the block walls I’m going to put under the kitchen. It will only be out as far as the porch around the rest of the house. That’s a project for this spring once it dries up and warms up a bit.

Below are a few recent photos of the house, the pond, and the landscaped front slope. I hope to have some more posts soon. We’re almost to spring when I can get back to work on the house.

Blocking in the crawl space

We’ve had plenty of rain so far this year. The garden has not suffered from dryness. In between rain showers and storms and all the other work there is to be done around here, I have continued to work on the house. I laid out blocks on the footer last week, figuring where the crawlspace walls need to be in relation the house frame.

Earlier this week, after some rain and before some other rain, I started mortaring the first course of blocks on the west side of the house for the wall that will be under the mudroom. The first step in the process was to remove some of the accumulated mud that had been deposited around the blocks by the rain. Then, I lifted out the block that was to be mortared into place, and placed some mortar where the block had been.

After distributing the mortar where the bottom edge of the block would set on it, I placed the block back into position. The main purpose for the mortar is to get the first course of blocks level. So, after placing the block on the mortar, I used a piece of wood to get it into place and then checked its placement with a level. I endeavored to make sure that each block was level side-to-side and along the line with the other blocks.

It takes a while to mortar the first course of blocks into place. I was able to complete the ones on the level that will be beneath the mudroom.  It then rained off and on during the next couple of days, and I managed to work on some other things that needed done.

I was able to return to the project yesterday afternoon after spending the morning working on my class (I teach a class online for a university). I started by mortaring the blocks along the next level of the footer on the west side of the house. This is a shorter run than the previous level, and it went fairly quickly.

After getting these blocks mortared into level, I began laying blocks. One thing about dry stack concrete block construction is that the block-laying goes quickly. I had to haul the blocks from where I had the block company put them a few weeks ago which is maybe 20 yards away and down hill from the house. I moved six at a time using a wheel barrow. That seemed to work better than using a hand truck.

I began laying blocks for the walls under the mudroom since that mortar was fully set up and cured. After completing laying those, I went ahead and laid the ones on the section I had just mortared. I figured that the mortar wasn’t going to settle or move with the weight of the blocks anyway.

Because of the way I designed and poured the footer, there are four levels for the blocks around the house. I did not worry about making the steps for each level perfect with the other levels so that the blocks could be laid seamlessly all the way around the house. Each level can be constructed as a separate wall. Any gaps that may exist between levels will be filled with concrete. Then, the whole thing will be coated with surface bonding cement. I will cut cedars for the sill on top of the wall, so any variation in height will be accounted for in the dimensions to which I cut them. This simplified the figuring and block laying for me.

I saw a block wall a couple days ago for which the footer appeared to have been poured on an angle matching the slope of the house site. The blocks appeared to have been cut along the bottom so that the top would be level. I didn’t want to do that much cutting. I think my method will work all right.

In anticipation of plumbing that I’ll do later, I cut a hole in one block before laying it. This hole will allow me to run the sewer pipe to the septic tank through the wall. I am not completely sure where the septic tank will go at this point. So, I’ll cut another hole on the opposite side of the house, too, just in case I need to place it on that side. I knew I didn’t want to cut a hole later.

As can be seen in the photo to the left, I didn’t lay out the end wall on the cellar exactly right. It doesn’t line up straight with the crawlspace wall I just laid. I can’t change it, of course, and it really won’t create much problem. I expect that it won’t be very noticeable later anyway.

A thunder storm rolled through just after I started writing this post. I was planning on working on the front crawlspace wall this afternoon. It may be too muddy now. I’ll see in a little while.

 

       

Perimeter footer

With enough rain-free weather, I was able to complete the forms for the perimeter footer on Tuesday of last week. There are four levels for the footer because of the slope of the house site. I didn’t want to excavate the trench for the footer the same depth all the way around the house.

On Wednesday morning, I called the local ready mix concrete company to order four yards of concrete. They were able to bring it out right away. It didn’t take long to pour the concrete. Dad and I screeded it which also didn’t take long. The footer is 14 inches wide, 8 inches thick, and has two 5/8” rebar pieces in the middle.

About an hour after we finished, a small rain storm came through. It didn’t dump much rain, but what rain that did fall fell hard. The concrete hadn’t had enough time to set up hard enough not to be affected by the rain. The main effect was that some of the cement and sand on the surface was washed away, leaving the courser aggregate exposed and loose on top. This occurred most dramatically to the footer at the front of the house because the runoff from the roof on that side hit directly on the outside quarter of the footer. You can see in the photo to the right the effect it had. It won’t really matter, though. The first course of blocks will be set onto the footer with mortar, and, once the walls are finished, the footer will be covered with dirt, never to be seen again.

I will begin laying the blocks this week as time allows. There are a lot of other jobs to be done around our homestead and we’ll be having some visitors for part of the week and next weekend (one of Anne’s sisters and her family).

Looking ahead to the order of construction, once the blocks are laid, it will be time to start framing the porch. I’ll have to pour footers for under the porch posts, lay blocks for the piers, and frame the porch deck. At that point I will put down the first floor subfloor, including under where the straw bales will go. I will need to lay down some porch floor boards, whether or not I complete that floor now or later, also. Then, there’s more to be done so that the porch roof can be put on. And, there’s a whole lot more work after that. I’ll keep plugging away, and it’ll get done.