Backfilling the frost footings

With the front wall surface bonded, core filled and insulated we were ready to backfill.

Here you get a good view of the two layers of 2" extruded foam that was used to insulate the front wall. You also can see the sill plate anchors sticking out of the blocks. The anchors are tied to rebar that go all the way down into the footing.

We wanted to backfill the inside and the outside of the foundation equally to avoid excess pressure on the wall. You can see here the taller rebar that will continue to the top of the 8' walls. I wanted to protect the foam from sun and damage, so I attempted to stick ice and water shield to it. The theroy was good but it ended up being a waste of money and time (boondogle).

Here you can see the 8" blocks stacked on top of the 12" blocks. This creates a 4" ledge the concrete slab will rest on.

I had some problem with the outer layer of foam wanting to get pulled down with the weight of the dirt.

We did not fill the inside to final grade because this dirt was mostly clay. Once the clay is packed it is very hard and the floor will need to be leveled for the slab. So later we will haul in some sand to finishg filling the inside to 2" below the ledge that you see. It is filled 2" low to allow for a layer of 2" high density (250) foam insulation.

I did not take any pictures of me stacking the back wall. As you can see here I had to leave the side walls unstacked to allow room for vern to backfill.

About to fill in the pumping pits.

Gradeing the South. If you look between the two layers of foam you can see some blue foam glue that I used to hold the sheets of foam together. This glue did not hold at all, allowing the sheets to sag when we back filled.

Breaking Gound

Two days ago (Friday April 29th) we finaly got to break ground on our new home. My friend Nathan brought his skidsteer over and started digging. The ground here is very heavy so there was some issue with getting through the sod but once he did it went slow but well.

Setting up the optical level for the grade that I wanted.

My friend Nathan.

The house site before the dig.






Part way through the dig we tried to push this old tree snag out of the ground with no success. So I started digging around the roots so I could cut them with a chain saw.


Just gitting started and the tree that has to be removed.



Tree roots dug out and cut.

About this time Vern showed up to see how it was going ( I had talked to him earlier that morning and he had mentioned that he was going to stop by) and offered to help with the shoveling around the roots. We dug for a while and cut as many roots as we could and tried to push the tree again with the skid steer. It was a no go. Then Vern offered to go get his back hoe since he only lives 1 1/2 miles away (Vern owns a septic company) and use it to remove the tree.



 

Well after seeing the ease that the backhoe had removing the tree and the fact that it was getting later in the day I decided to have Vern just finish digging the site. It went really well and he was real nice to me for price so he will be doing all of my digging in the future.

 

Vern digging the North East corner of our site.



 

All done.