Utilities In

With most of the utilities conduit already in place Home Gas comes in for their in-slab installations.

Ian Haughton of Phoenix and Dayne Brady of Home Gas discuss bringing the propane into the home.  Home Gas product will be firing the AC, kitchen range, hot water heaters, dryer, bbq, fire pit and the Tiki torches in the back yard. Quite a lot of planning to do!

More to come later on these great products

The Home Gas team install the line into the home.

Digger Day

Next comes the job of backfilling the building’s foundations - finer material that compacts well is used here.

 

 

A compactor is used above to compress the fill, which must be brought in and compacted in stages called “lifts”. Again, this step is critical to avoid settlement of the floor slab of the home.

Foundation Block

We are already well along in constructing the foundation of the home. Many waterfront home owners are mindful of the flooding that occurred in Ivan and want to get their ground floors well up above any potential reoccurrence of that event. The stem walls and the fill required within can be a major additional cost to building the home and the final slab level should be discussed and agreed upon early in the design process. An elevated home site can also impact the way the exterior elements of the home are approached and you must plan for transitioning in and out of the home.

Concrete Day #1

It is always a good day when the first concrete truck arrives!

                                      Ian supervises the concrete going into the strip footings.

We will build up the home’s foundation walls from this concrete and steel base.

 

Breaking Ground!

We are off to the races, and we have brought in Andres Artuch, one of the island’s finest backhoe operators, to assist us in carving out the trenches required for the home’s “strip footings”

“Drey” will follow the spray painted markings to excavate exactly the right size, depth and width for the home’s concrete footings.  Site foreman Troy Rankin is seen here managing the process with a laser level.

The steel is raised above the bed of the footing to allow for coverage beneath

The footings for the entire home will be excavated and steel laid in before the first concrete arrives on site.

Vertical steel, called “starter bars”, are then tied into the footings to connect to the concrete foundation walls – You can see that the project coordinator is doing his job as the concrete block (in the background) for the foundations walls has already been delivered to the site.

If you missed out on our earlier entries, be sure to click on "Older Posts" below or browse the "Blog Archive" above-right, to go back to the beginning of the project and see the whole story.