The saga of our building a foundation after we built a house continues…in this latest episode, our heroes are positioned to build a wooden wall atop the block wall that they completed in our last episode.  Will they get splinters?  Will the Mrs. pummel the Mr. because of his stupidity?  Stay tuned viewers and find out!

Ok, so we built a wall on the back side of the building.  Of course, the idea is to eventually frame in all four sides with wooden framed walls on top of the block base.  We could have blocked the walls all of the way up but we both decided that we do not like lifting blocks any higher than we have to and that I am better and faster with wood.  We added a sill plate on top of the blocks and secured it with j-bolts embedded in concrete we used to fill in the holes in the blocks.  On top of that, we used treated 2x4s to build a traditional wall.  I made the fit tight for the wall boards so it will, in fact, provide a level of support to the entire structure as well.  The bulk of the weight of the building will remain on the posts and piers but the outer walls will have additional support.

Did you know that the outer walls carry the bulk of the weight of a building?  All of the weight of the roof (in our style building, anyhow), is evenly spread between the outer walls  opposite the gable ends?  I learned all sorts of stuff building this house, and, in particular, the way loads are carried and how to balance the weight of the house.  In reality, the house is not all that heavy.  Of course, you wouldn’t want to be under it if it fell, but spread out over its base, the pressure in a given area is not as bad as I expected when I first started ciphering on this place.  There are all sorts of calculations one needs to do related to live and dead loads, soil bearing capacity and component strengths when you build a house.  I had no idea but it’s pretty interesting to read and makes sense when you even realize these things are indeed things.

Anyhow, we finished the tallest of the “basement” walls and have blocks laid for half of each side wall.  We now need to dig additional footer space at the front of the building and the remaining halves of each side.  It should not be a terrible job but it will have to be done by hand as the excavator arm will not fit under the building in the remaining spots.

Our heroes have an interesting (not really) weekend ahead of them.  Stay tuned to our next episode…”Human backhoes”

I know, I have been posting way too much about the (slow) progress we have been making on the deluxe deer stand.  Sorry but that’s been a large part of what we have been doing lately.  So, we have been digging and concreting and cussing like mad to build a foundation under our already-built house.  Originally, we built the place on a post-and-pier foundation and that will remain the true foundation but we decided to add a traditional foundation (sort of) to give us some storage under the place and to cut the wind/cold in the winter.  So, we have been adding footers and new concrete block walls.  The first day of concrete, Emily and I mixed around 3200 pounds of concrete which I had to carry, bucket at a time, from the mixer (electric…thank goodness) to the footer form we dug/built.  We double handled the weight and that was a drag…

Those of you who know about foundations know that the footer is traditionally poured in one pour so there are no joints. That was not an option for us and since this isn’t a true foundation (except we are building it to spec aside from the joints), it should work for us.  We will have a few cold joints but they will be connected by rebar and buried well below the frost-line.

Emily’s grandfather, Emily and I set the corner last weekend.  The corner blocks have to be level/square/plumb and can be a pain the the hind-end.  So, it took us 5 hours to lay 5 blocks (also, see cussing mentioned above…there were a few missteps), but our corner is excellent!  Emily’s grandfather is 87 and worked every bit as hard as we did.  He slung block around and stood in the ditch all day helping us get things right…it was amazing!

This weekend, Emily and I went back and laid 50-some more blocks and got the bottom third of the footer above grade.  I have to tell you, if I had it to do over again, I would definitely build my foundation before the house.  I am still quite pleased with the post-and-pier foundation but traditional foundations should definitely be built where there is plenty of room to work!

Setting block is tough work and I cannot wait to have this part done.  It’s hard and I wish I had dishpan hands!  Concrete is hard on my delicate digits!  I’ll show some more details of how we plan to enclose this bottom part later but I promise to get off of this kick for a little while…bear with me?