Disaster Mansion

We continue to prepare for the ground floor pour. Seems like we have been doing this for months which is probably not far from the truth. If you had asked me, before we started, how long I thought it would would take I would have said about three weeks, dig out and level basement dirt, add 5 – 6″ of gravel and compact, add vapour barrier, foam insulation, rebar and radiant heating – easy! I should know better by now and multiply all estimates by four or five.

Most of the delays have been spent working around our irregular footings and that has involved a lot of trimming with grinder, hammer drill and chisel etc. If this was a new build we wouldn’t have these problems as everything would be square and at the same height. Even after tidying up the footings they still aren’t square, straight or at the same height so accurately cutting and taping the vapour barrier and foam insulation is more time consuming than I thought. Like a lot of things in the house this is a first for ourselves so we are taking our time and trying to do it right.  We have made a few mistakes like getting the levels wrong in bedroom which meant we had to remove a few inches of gravel – annoying as we had finished putting down the vapour barrier and insulations.

After the gravel was compacted we started laying down the vapour barrier, we were going to put the vapor barrier above the foam but the local building inspector recommended it go below the foam so that’s where it went. We had previously bought some 6 mil polyethylene sheet for this purpose but after some research 6 mil seems to be about the bare minimum so we bought some StegoHome 10-Mil Vapor Retarder which is a lot thicker and comes in a cool color. The red Stego tape is really great also, super sticky. I’d like to thank Mariah of Stego Industries who has been most helpful and patient with us. Thank you Mariah!!

As we had the 6 mil sheet anyway I decided to put that down first as it helped stop us kicking up the compacted gravel as we walked over it. We also wrapped the vapour barrier up the walls a bit – seemed like a good idea especially where the rear walls are build into the earth and subject to damp.

With the vapour barrier pretty much down so we’ve started to add the 2″ foam insulation sheets and we feel we’ve done a pretty decent job with most of the foam joints being nice and tight. Eventually these will all get taped up.

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After the main floor insulation we needed to run the foam insulation up the sides of the walls by about 4 to 5″. This acts as a thermal barrier so our heated slab doesn’t end up loosing heat to the footings and outside walls. It was during this process that I discovered more concrete that had to be removed – there goes another three evenings! In the photos below the green laser line is the finished floor level and if I hadn’t removed the concrete above that we would have had a ledge in the bedroom which would have meant that you couldn’t push furniture up against the wall. In the end I went down 1″ below the laser line – I’m getting pretty good with the hammer and chisel 🙂

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Below you can see the beveled foam edging which I cut with my track saw. The foam will be about 1/2″ below the finished floor so you’ll never see it. It’s glued down with a construction adhesive.

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Finally a room with the rebar mesh laid down and zip tied together. On top of this I’ll zip tie the radiant heating pex tubing but first I need to finish off the edge insulation in the other rooms.

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I’ll be really glad when this job is over and we have a concrete floor. This might be the biggest job we’ve tackled so far.

As it was nice weather this weekend we decided to start mixing the concrete for our patio wall. We finished a 12′ section yesterday and today we finished the rest of the left hand side. It took seven trips to the hardware store to pick up concrete as we can’t carry too much in a salon car, at 60 or 80lbs a bag it soon adds up. I think we used just over 30 bags to get this work done and we finished just as it was starting to rain, good timing. Concrete ended up being about 5″ thick and we did add 3/8″ rebar. We’ll leave the right side empty in case we have any excess concrete from the pour.

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Inside we’ve been laying the insulation foam down and I’ve spent quite a bit of time cutting back the uneven footings a few inches so that the foam boards fits well. It’s not work I enjoy as it’s uncomfortable, noisy and dusty but I think worth doing. In one of the photos below you can see the marks some insects have made in the dust – I suspect the large tracks are from a centipede. We’re cutting the foam with a combination of Makita track saw, Japanese hand saw and a sharp bladed utility knife.

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This week we have the Kingston building inspector coming around to look at our pre-pour work so it will be interesting to see what he says.

This weekend we started the compaction of our gravel. Big thanks to Don the Johnson who picked up the compactor for us and then went off with Aimee to buy 25 sheets of 4’x8′ x 2″ foam board, 100′ of rebar and 32 sheets of rebar mesh. Bill for that was $1,500 and luckily the price of foam had dropped by $10 a board from the previous week – Covid. What a great help you were Don, big thanks.

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So we needed the plate compactor to compact the gravel and to help stop the gravel settling over time. I found this quote from Braen Stone:

Although there are certain scenarios in which stone will tend to naturally compact or hold its place, many materials will begin to settle over time. When this happens, the surface becomes uneven, resulting in the development of gaps, dips and holes

The weakened surface results in unsafe conditions and costly repairs. The only way to prevent these problems from arising is by investing the time in stone compaction. This will create a solid base or sub-base that will hold its form and add to the life and value of your project.

It took Aimee a full afternoon compacting the gravel in the three ground floor rooms and after compaction the gravel had settled by about 3/4″. The finished result does look great, flat, level and pretty smooth. Next step will be laying out the foam insulation, followed by a Stego 10 mil vapour barrier, rebar mesh and radiant heat tubing.

We hired the plate compactor (heavy bugger) from Equipment Rentals NY and had to return it by 7.30am, so a big thank you to George, our neighbour, who met us at DM at 7am with his truck as it won’t fit in our sedan car. One day we will buy some sort of truck or SUV.

Well it was worth a try.

Over the last week we’ve been moving gravel into the ground floor to form a sub-base for the concrete pour. I ordered about 13 cubic yards which equates to about 14 tons in weight. Weather conditions haven’t been ideal as the last weekend we had temperatures in the high nineties with 100% humidity. Now that heat wave has been broken it’s wet.

We’re aiming for about 5″ – 6″ of gravel which we’re leveling with a laser level. Once we get it pretty flat we’ll hire a compactor to settle the gravel and then start on the next layers which will be 2″ of foam insulation and a vapor barrier (plastic sheet). We’ll pay someone to do the actual pour but we’ll likely lay down the rebar mesh and the radiant heating pipework, subject to a bit of reading up.

We were a bit short on the gravel so we ordered 3 cubic yards more and now we have too much. To get rid of it I’ve dug a trench which will be used for a small supporting wall for a stone patio and I’ll use the gravel as a sub-base for that pour.

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If you watched the video in it’s full you may have spotted a guest appearance from our cute little car. I’ll leave it up to you to guess which car it is. In case you’re wondering what we are doing at the end of the video we are washing the gravel over a sieve as it was mixed with dirt – like father, like son.

We’re not sure who put it there, but the plot thickens.

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Yes it’s our gravel and it will form the sub-base for the concrete ground floor. We ordered 13 cubic yards (about 17 tons) and this should be enough to give us a 5″ – 6″ layer of gravel, main purpose of which is for drainage under the slab.

Shifting it will keep us busy but I think we’ll have it all done by the following weekend. My Dad used to order huge piles of soil, gravel, sand etc. so I’m used to the mental stamina required in moving it! Anyone fancy a workout?

I have to say that we were pretty impressed with the supplier, Denter Sand & Gravel. We ordered lunchtime and when we got to the house this evening it was already there!!!!