Pouring Footings

 
The night that we finished setting up the forms we decided to start mixing cement. Mainly to get the process down for the big day to come. With the help of A.J., Trace and the boys we got a good start and figured out what we were doing for the next day.



   

  340 bags x 60lb. each = a butt load of weight 



With Levi and Cody running the mixer and me shuttling cement it was going really well.

The first dump of the day.

My good friend A.J. moving cement.

The first load of cement

Getting the leveling process figured out.

 

This old piece of steel roofing made a great chute.



The end of the first night of pouring (we only had about an hour).



  The next morning we started early to try and get it all poured in one day. We were doing really well until we heard this loud "Bang" and the mixer went quiet. I went to the mixer and tried to start it and it pulled over way to easily. I knew we had lost the mixer. It turns out that we snapped the connecting rod. So Trace and I quickly tried to locate a large mixer that could be rented. We were lucky enough to find one in Mora (8 miles away). All said and done we were back in business but had lost about 2 hours of time. Now it was going to be close for time. The forecast was calling for a few days of rain and I needed the footings done. We had a long way to go and not really enough time to get there.



The Frost footing.



Filling the step footing.



The progress as of noon the next day. Note the new mixer. The old mixer decided to snap a connecting rod about half way through the pour.

 

I think I found the problem.

 This is the last picture I got of the pour before it got dark.

  Well it was after dark when we finished the pour so I didn't get any finished pictures. I was 3 bags short of finishing and it was to late to go to any store and get more (I tried). I would have had 3 bags extra but during one of the mixes the mixer dump arm released and dumped 6 bags onto the ground. Such is life. We put plastic over the fresh cement in the dark as it started to rain. That was really close.

 

 

 





Buliding Forms

The next step was to build the the forms for the footings. We started by placing the Batter Boards, streching stringlines and squaring it all up.

Once we had our corners marked and the footing height esstablished we went to building the forms. Three of the walls of the house will be burmed 6' however the front will be like a walkout so we had to build a step footing. The books say that you should have a max step of 2' but hey lets live life on the edge (my step is 61"). We had some extra challenge working down in the pit because the bottom was hardpan and it was not possible to drive stakes. So we ended up just burming the forms to keep them in possition. We got the forms built but the burming did not hold the forms well and I don't recomend doing it this way.

Levi screwing together the lower portion of the step form.

After we stacked and burmed all the footings we started to place the re bar.

The re bar seen sticking up is what will tie the dry stacked walls to the footing.

By adding two pieces of #5 re bar it raises the strength of the concrete from 12,000 lb. per sq. foot to 64,000 lb. per sq. foot.

Trace made this jig to place the re bar so that it would line up with the cores of the block (it worked every one lined up).