Building from the ground up

So after some additional exploratory demolition this week, we've come to accept some realities:

1) There are no footings for our foundations (they are poured on grade).
2) We need footings (given our soil and moisture issues).
3) Given the weight of the soil (HEAVY), we need to have a mini-digger in to excavate.

So - this past week was "break up the foundations with a jackhammer and get ready for the mini-digger" week, as well as cut away the lower wall sections (which I'm aiming to convert into furniture...ambitious, but we'll see).

Given the fact that our house sits on a clay lens which means that when it rains, we get a puddle of water below our house about 6-8 inches deep, I'm feeling like "damproofing" the footings simply isn't sufficient. Concrete wicks moisture and so if you're footings are sitting in standing water, welcome to wet walls. Accordingly, I'm going to opt to go with an interesting new "technology" (hard to call a bag "technology") in which your footings are poured into a waterproof bag. The company is called Fab-Form and they offer not only these "footing in a bag" (called Fastfoot), but also Insulated Concrete Forms (ICFs), which are styrofoam blocks that allow you to form and pour concrete that is automatically insulated. We're still finalizing exactly who we'll use, but the plan is to create a foundation with roughly R30 footings.

I spent the weekend moving concrete around (which I'm aiming to reuse in the garden for retaining walls), as well as organizing wood, and getting set for the digging machine to come in. Here are some pics of the place as it stands:

Concrete, wood, gravel....oh my! Now organized far better than this. 

Our elevated house, now with a fancy blue fence!

Foundation, in block form, ready for life as a garden wall

The side of our house, foundations broken.

View to the front of the house with cribbing partially filled with gravel for mini-digger to get through

Kristina at the rear of the house - May 17, 2012

On Saturday, we also hung out on our block and solid a whole $13 dollars worth of "stuff" that we were aiming to get rid of (as well as spent $0.50!), but did get a chance to meet more of our neighbours which was great. We continue to be happily surprised at the new community we'll be joining come fall.

Hopefully by the end of this week we'll have our foundations dug, and the foundation ready to pour for the following week *fingers crossed*.