Date: July 16 - July 26, 2025
Before the concrete pour on Wednesday I asked Gerry how soon they could take down the ICF braces and he said even one day of curing was long enough. So I said lets get 'em down Thursday or Friday then. When we poured the walls on Wednesday he said he couldn't come on until Monday and why was I in such a hurry? My reasoning is that I wanted to schedule Curly to do the prep work for the slab ASAP and before he could do that I needed to bury pipes for sewer, and both floor drains and radon collection for the root cellars. And those had to be inspected. And cued up behind the slab was scheduling the McCurry for the start of framing. I wanted to give Stacy a date to plan on as soon as I could, since my initial mid-July timeline was definitely not happening. In short, I wanted those braces down so I could spend the weekend putting down pipe with the Kubota backhoe and get the inspection done Monday.
After sleeping on it I had the idea that I could just work around the bracing if I moved a couple of the supports. I ran that idea by Gerry who didn't have a problem with it. And it was just as well that nobody was working on the building Thursday and Friday since Charla had an arborist and his crew come take down a bunch of trees which had the driveway blocked both days.
I'd done a little advance work for the pipe. The reader might remember my contact with Arvol C in the last post. At some point I stopped by his house to introduce myself in person. He welcomed me right into his somewhat cluttered house, a custom of some people around here that I find endearing. Knowing that I was doing my project, he gave me a tour of all the building supply stuff he had in his basement - he's a collector of what some may call junk. And he mentioned that he had a stash of 3" and 4" PVC sewer pipe that I could by for half of whatever Lowes was charging for it. I took that deal had some 20' lengths on hand for my under-slab needs.
I started with the radon vents in the root cellars. According to the building inspector they are not required in our area and they don't inspect them anymore, but I think with these enclosed root cellar spaces its easier to at least have pipe there now then to deal with it at any future time.
That gave me the destination for my ditch. I started with the 3" floor drain pipes since they were the more complicated. Below you can see the other via through the footing into the root cellar. Turns out that I needed to chip out a little more bedrock in order to keep the downhill tilt of the pipe.
So I broke out the old rock chisels and sledge hammer from my bedrock days and proceeded to have my way with it. It responded by bouncing that chisel back at my right shin. I should of seen that coming as it had already ricocheted away in other directions! Although painful my leg wasn't seriously hurt so I went on with the job.The backhoe work was snug as I needed room for the dirt too:I'd forgotten how much glue those 4" pipe joints use so had to make a run into Mars Hill to get more glue. I've got to rate it as miserable work because the day was hot and very humid, the work hard and the sweat soaked my shirt and pants and was pouring off my forehead, dropping onto the pipe joints as I tried to spread PVC primer and glue on them.
For the final connection I had to do three simultaneous joints at the junction of the two floor drain pipes to get it to lay down correctly. The light was pretty dim and I was slopping glue everywhere, but the pipes were together and looked like the overlap in the sleeves was OK. So I hung up the spurs, sat down on the porch and took off my boots and incurred a new life experience.
The right laces were quite sticky and stiff, but I got them loose thinking I must have spilled a lot more PVC glue on them than I noticed. I padded to the upstairs bathroom in my stocking feet then remembered I had left my phone out there, so backtracked using the slip-on rubber boots to fetch it. When I took them off I thought it smelled like an old dog and wondered what Cypher (our cat) had got into. When I got back to the upstairs bathroom I thought "This place smells like a wet dog that's been rolling in carrion!" I mean it stunk! Then I went to take off my sock and realized it was soaked through with blood. Turns out that when that chisel hit my shin it struck a vein which had been happily bleeding for hours down into my sock until it filled my shoe! With my eyes now open I noticed that I'd left a track of bloody footprints everywhere I'd gone. Luckily we've keep a bottle of Hydrogen Peroxide on hand, which could have the motto "The thing you need when blood is the problem."
Monday Gerry and crew came back and worked around my ditches to clean up the walls.
The building inspector came, a different guy, and he couldn't quite believe the ignorance he found. I had the pipes there, but they weren't under pressure (which is required to ensure they don't leak). Also where the pipes came out of the footing through the vias was supposed to have silicone to seal it. He said I could fill the pipes with water for the pressure test, and I'd have to seal up those vias, although he couldn't tell me why it was required. (My common sense was that those vias would allow water welling up inside the footing to drain out as they were on the downhill side.) So it was a wasted trip for them but I got educated.
Meanwhile Gerry & Co were installing the "dimple board" waterproofing membrane to the outside walls that would be below ground.
For waterproofing the root cellar roof, after doing some google research, I had made an online purchase of 60mil EPDM roofing. This is like a rubber fabric that's a lot like a super thick inner tube. I found it in a 10'x25' sheet, which fit the 8x23' roof cellar roof perfectly. So they spread it on the roof, under the dimple board that shed onto it and draped over the edges of to shed outside the dimple board below it. It seemed sufficient not so tough it could take a lot of walking, and work boots were heading its way.
It's inevitable: after the ICF crew was paid and gone I start to see the stuff they hadn't dealt with. There were places where they hadn't trimmed the spray foam because when they made a pass doing that the braces were still up getting in the way. I texted Gerry about it and he offered to come back and deal with it. After sleeping on it I took him up on that and a few days later his daughter and a helper came out in a car and spent multiple hours going over everything and putting tape on the joints in the dimple board. So that increased the quality a good bit.
That evening I made a run to Lowes for some 3/4" foam boards to protect the EPDM roofing.
I also picked up the test plugs that real men use for their plumbing inspections:
and tubes of silicon caulking. This was a great application to use up the old caulking tubes I'd saved in the closet. Having plugged the ends, I filled the pipes with water to the lip, then left it overnight to ensure there were no leaks. These are the root cellar floor drains:
When the old building inspector came for the second pass, the water was still sitting at the pipe lip, and there was no sign of leakage at any of the joints. He explained that when you do a standing water test you are supposed to have 10' height on the pipe, but he let it slide.
This was now Tuesday, so I let Curly know we were ready to start with the slab prep and used the Kubota to cover the pipes. This time I stacked rounds of wood above the pipe ends outside the footer before covering them with dirt so hopefully digging them out again later will be easier.
Nothing happened Wednesday. Thursday afternoon a dump truck showed up with 3/4 inch gravel. He brought two loads and left a big pile right in the center of the building. Friday morning Curly arrived trailering a skid steer and a crew to do the prep. When we did the wall pour, Curly had asked me about the root cellars (they are a curiosity for most everyone). When I described the wet cellar idea, he said "so you'll have a dirt floor in here." This had been running through my mind and it makes sense. I decided could use rock dust for the floor of that cellar and it would probably be better for the moisture. So I let him know we wouldn't put the slab in that room but should just get the gravel in there. This kinda negates the need for a floor drain (except for a flood!) and the radon vent, but they'll be there if I ever decide to put concrete down.
After unloading the equipment Curly was gone to do another job. The crew got busy making the gravel level.
You can see the blue line they snapped for the where the top of the slab will be.After shifting the extra gravel to a pile next to the driveway, the put in a form board across the front to allow for a 1/2" drop-off from the main level. Some folks would slant the whole floor toward the front but I think that level is better for working on things.
Then then covered the gravel with 6 mil plastic and through a little gravel on it to keep it in place. I asked them if they could take an hour and a little extra money to help place gravel around the outside of the footing in preparation for me putting in the footing drain. This meant walking buckets of gravel back there. The west side I could throw in from my front end loader so we didn't need to do that.
Here is a complete site walk through Saturday morning after it rained.
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