Rebuilding the wall

After the wind took down the wall, we got right to staking it up again. Trace and I were able to restack the wall in about 4 hours.

This time the wall went up fast and straight. I was much happier with it the second time through.

The last block.

Notice all the damaged block corners from thier big fall.

Happy? Oh, yeah!

Finished with the dry stacking and ready to core fill. After we finish core filling we I will surface bond the wall.



Not bad for a few rookies.



To much wind

After we finished backfilling the front wall, I finished stacking the side walls and got set up to start core filling.

Before....

After.....

I got a call at work from Vern (who had come over to pick up his backhoe).  He said, "I have some bad news. Last night in the storm the whole back wall blew down." I had seen the reports of high wind and wondered if it had stayed standing, so this was bad news but almost expected. I firmly believe that God has had his hand on this project from the time we found the land. I replied to him, "Well, if God took it down there must have been something wrong with it." Vern chuckled and said, "I guess that is one way to look at it."

I had stacked the back wall and then had to redirect my attention to backfilling (Vern had called and said that he had an opening in his schedual and had time to backfill). Unfortunatly, I did not have time to core fill or surface bond the wall before the next big storm came through.

The strom that came packing up to 80 mph wind gust and the 48' unsecured wall just could not stand aginst that kind of pressure.

The scafolding was in just the right spot to protect the cement mixer.

Luckily there was only 13 blocks that were to badly damaged to use again. My stack of foam, seen in this photo took a real beating, but was still usable. The wheelbarrow suffered a few new dents, but managed to protect the water pump under it.

The only cost of the wall falling was the loss of 13 cement blocks and time. Grand total = $12.50

We started restacking the wall that night and it was going better than it did the first time.

All in all it was a win that the wall came down. It had not turned out well the first time. It had about an inch of bow in it and the bow was in (making the wall weaker when backfilled). The second time I knew what I had done wrong the first time, and corrected it.

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.

Insulating the South wall before back filling

Sorry, I am a little weak on pictures for this post but I all that I did was glue two layers of extruded foam to the surface bonded wall. I then clamped it in place and waited for it to dry. I opted to only insulate down 4 feet. Most everyone told me I only needed 2 inches of foam. That would have given me an "R" value of 10. I wanted to be higher than that so the whole house is done with 4 inches of foam, giving  us an R-20. I also staggered the joints, overlapping them 4 feet.

First shot at S.B.C. (Surface bonding cement)

Once we had dry stacked all the 12" blocks that made up the front frost footings I needed to surface bond them together. The surface bonding process is not a new technique and studies have shown that it is stronger than a mortared wall. I was mostly attracted to the fact that I did not need to be a brick layer to dry stack cement blocks, and with the use of SBC I could make a wall that was stronger than mortar with no prior experience.

The process is started by mixing a product called surface bonding cement and water. I used Quickbond (a Quickcrete product) and it worked well. Be sure you do not get it on your hands. I got big time chemical burns from it in a real short time. After mixing the batch to my desired consistency I would fill a pail and trawl the SBC to the wall. It was fast and was not to difficult. Since the coating is only about an 1/8 - 1/4" thick you need to presoak the wall, and also keep the SBC wet down for as long as practical to let it dry slower. The SBC needs to be applied to both sides of the wall to be effective. I should also mention that it is water proof once it is set.

This is how you get running water with no electricity to the build site.

The SBC is applied to full thickness in one coat.

Hear you can see that I presoaked the wall ahead of applying the SBC.

See how the SBC is drying. I tryed to keep it damp for 4 hours or so after application.

Laying the first blocks

With the footings completed and the first delivery of block at the build site it was time to get started on the next phase of construction (dry stacking the block walls). The first thing that we had to do was reset our string lines and find the house corners. Then we chalked lines on the footings so that we could place the first coarse of block.   

The first coarse is laid down the same as any other block wall. Each block is set in mortar and made level and plumb. 

The second coarse on up is simply stacked together dry (no mortar) in a running bond pattern. Each block needs to be sanded to insure they do not have burrs and stack together tightly.

The tarps and plywood were simply there to block the sun (almost 100 outside).

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while.

First delivery of cement blocks

With the ground still saturated from all the rain we again had to have the delivery dropped off out at the road and have Vern shuttle the blocks to the build site.

Unfortunately, we ended up with a lot of broken blocks