Basement Floor

This was really cool. The first picture here is gravel being shot into the spaces where it is needed. Once the walls were up to the first floor level, Ben poured gravel into building space, smoothed it and then made trenches for pipe work. The third picture the plumber laid out pipe, then insulation followed and more rebar, and the pipes for the underfloor heating and then cement got poured over all of it.

ICF

ICF stands for insulated concrete form. The above picture is what it looks like before you put in rebar and concrete. We call it lego. It snaps together just like that. Next time we build we plan to use James. These are pictures of the start of the basement walls going up.

Here Comes the Cement

This is pouring the foundation. Everyone turns out to watch (except David who had to work that day.) I put the picture in too small of the cement pump truck. You should click on it and see it big. It has extended arms that lift it off the ground like something out of Howls moving Castle! The man in the hard hat in the picturing guiding the cement into the foundation is our fabulous builder, Ben. The two people smoothing the cement are his dad and uncle, (family business.)

Prepare to Build

Finally, we get planning permission and get rid of the derelict house. Ben the builder gets ready for the real house. This is the famous facility(rented for the duration of the build) on the land-- otherwise known as the honey bucket. The other two pictures are the foundation. We had our first spot of trouble with the foundation. One corner was clay-- we had to get the geotech from the DDES in, dig down deeper than planned, and add gravel, but it worked out.

Weiss Creek

It is really hard to take a good picture of our creek. It runs down hill through our land in a steep gulley with lots of trees and salmon berry. This makes it dark to photograph. After several tries, this is about the best I could do. It is much prettier than this shows and there are salmon, crayfish and newts and it makes a wonderful bubbly stream sound all year around.

wellhouse

This is the wellhouse which has been many weeks in the making and still isn't done. It has a concrete floor with a 1000 gallon tank under it for storing water. The well shaft actually comes up through the floor inside the well house and because we have artesian flow we can turn a tap on and with no pump, 3 to 5 gallons of water a minute rush out. (We will get a pump for moving the water to the house.) The rest of the space in the 200 square ft building we can use as we like.

It has two foot high block walls that I have now finished facing with rock, Montana Gold Stone that we bought and local rock that we dug up. (Sean says we live on a giant gravel pile and this seems to be totally true! It is glaicer rock moved from up north.)

The roof of the building is like a big box. We did a layered tar roof and are going to plant it up with native growth- several varieties ferns, huckleberry, and moss (--something that grows on everything and anything that stands still in Seattle, so it seemed a natural choice.) We have a stump that we will put on it too. We still have to put lava rock for drainage and soil up there. This is a job that requires a large ladder and David and possibly his collection of pulleys, so it hasn't happened yet. I did not want to do it in the summer when I would have had to water the plants to get them established-- imagine having to water your roof!

The picture with David in it-- is of wire tying. Because the roof is so heavy once the soil is on it(and sometimes wet), the cable is an extra support, especially because we have small, earth quakes occasionally. That is our neighbour and friend, Jay, in the picture with David. He built his house-- mostly himself and is very interested in different building techniques. Between him and David, they figured it out. The wire will be embedded in the cob walls (once I actually do that) and won't be seen.

The big rock picture is a rock we dug out of the foundation for the wellhouse. It is granite. The wood columns are pieces of driftwood the kids and I collected last summer at Brenda's house. They are about six feet long and filled the whole length of the van when we brought them home!

A rather raggedy house

No worries. It's gone now.

This is Jan's picture of the derelict house on our land. She set up a blog site for me in July so that I could send you pictures as we went along and I am finally getting them loaded onto the website.

The DDES gave us permission to actually build rather than remodel! Yeah. Because there was nothing we liked about this house! Now some money later--it is gone.