Thanksgiving 2008

Another great Thanksgiving has come and gone and we are all a couple pounds heavier to prove it. On Thursday we spent the day at the Bradford's and of course mom made my favorite meal ever!!!! We all hung out and were lazy all day.

Then on Friday is Roger's side of the family. Everyone came over to see the house that afternoon. Jay, Sharron, Rebecca, Nate, Kotcha, Joyce, Grandpa & Grandmother all stopped by to see the progress! Then on to Grandmothers house for her wonderful meal -- lots of family and good food.

Great walls of split faced block

It is finally time to put up the block walls! Again we thought this would go off without a hitch, but we were wrong. At first the walls were going up great. The crew we hired were doing a great job building our walls. They got a lot done each day; but then we came to a huge snag. We had an engineer out to talk about the roof and he said there is no way the block on top of the windows would ever hold -- the windows would just collapse once the roof was up. We couldn't believe it -- what are we to do now???? So we called our engineer that drew the plans and he said of course it would not hold up the block. To that Roger asked why in the world did you draw it then, he replied ..... "you wanted it that way". They he said .... "I am out of it now and I will not sign off on the stability of the roof". Well you can imagine the fury we experienced at that moment. Why did he not tell us from the beginning this wouldn't work???? We had to push forward though. So we found an experienced engineer and he said we would need steel beams to go over all the windows in order to hold up the roof. So we had to wait a week for the beams to be delivered :(. Once the beams were delivered it was Thanksgiving time and we couldn't get anyone out to work. Then after Thanksgiving it rained for a few days. So a few weeks later, we finally got everyone on track and we were up and going again. At this point 12/8/08 we are almost done with the walls and it can't come too soon. We have one more run in with the kitchen window -- hopefully this can be resolved and then they can finish the walls.

On a great note, we love the split-faced block walls and columns!! It is really cool and very different from any house we have seen.

Time to SWIM!!

The concrete slab had to set for a couple of days and then finally the long awaited pool arrived. A crane service came with Tom's Pools to put the pool in the hole. When the crane arrived the guy said "This is the biggest hot tub we have ever delivered for Tom's Pools -- what exactly are you doing with this thing?" Roger quickly replied ha ha this is not a hot tub it is a pool. They gave him a hard time saying "we were wondering what kind of playboy mansion this would be with a hot tub this large". Needless to say this is the first time Tom's Pools had ever sold a pool like this so the crane service had no idea it was a pool. Now that the pool is in place I really want to fill it up and start swimming, but Roger said we have to wait :(. I know it is best to wait till the house is finished, but I really want to swim!!!!

Pouring of the slab

The day has finally come -- the slab is poured!! We have waiting on this day for months now -- there were days we didn't think this would ever happen. Randy Dunn was the sub that finished the concrete for us. Of course mom was here to take all the pictures. Black Concrete was here by 8:00 am and they began working. First they poured the concrete to go around the pool for the walls - we were very nervous about this but it all went well. The walls of the pool are 12" thick in some areas -- this is the safest place of the whole house (ha ha). Anyway, once the pool walls were up to the top they went around to the rest of the house. Randy used a bull float to smooth it out first -- his feet sunk all the way to the bottom at this stage. They then took a couple of hours off and went back to use the first motorized smoother. His feet was barely sinking at this point. Then he finished it off with a larger machine and by this point the concrete was really setting and he was not sinking at all. Roger was really impressed with Randy and he learned a lot. Concrete is amazing to me, as the hours go on it gets hotter and hotter which in turn makes the concrete harden. It looks great -- Roger and I are extremely relieved. Getting to this point has been rough and emotional, but it is finally done and looks great to top it all off!!!

Radiant Floor Heat

We are heating our house with a solar radiant floor system. The red pipes constantly circulates hot water through the concrete slab. The pipes are hooked up to a solar hot water heater. This will be the only heating system in the house. It will heat up the concrete and then radiate throughout the whole house. I am very curious to see how well this works -- at least we can heat the house for FREE!!!! There is 1200 feet of this pipe in the slab. There are no breaks/connections in the pipes. Each pipe links to the in-take and out-take valves, so we should never have a leak (hopefully). Once Roger put down all the pipes, we then had to put 1000 plastic zip-ties that secured the pipes to the re-bar. Mom came over that day and helped Roger tie them all down. Well then we had to cut the tips of the zip-ties off. Thank goodness dad came over that day. Who knew 1000 zip-ties would be that many --- it was. Dad and I worked for hours on this project. I had many many many blisters at the end of this day. Once the pipes were down, we had a horrible realization -- the slab was not going to be as thick as it needed to be. The total thickness of the slab should be 4" thick. We were measuring from the top of the first round and there were places where the concrete would only be 2" thick. Roger quickly realized that technology is not always right. The laser beam they used ended up being off in places. Oh no what are we going to do -- this was the worst day so far. The concrete was coming the next day all the re-bar & radiant pipes were down; we can't dig down in the high spots. Roger was pissed and I had no idea what to do. Roger had to come up with a miracle and he did. We built up a 2" form on top of the first round of blocks to raise the level to 4" in the lowest parts. Now this was no easy win -- it took us hours to build these forms and then of course our luck once we started installing them, Roger's nail gun stopped working, could it get any worse. Roger found new nails and the gun started working. The best part was dad showed up out of no where to help where ever he could. I think mom told him he needed to come, the few times I talked to her this day, I was on the verge of tears at any time. I had the best feeling when I saw dad's car. While Roger finished building the forms, dad and I clipped the tips of the plastic zip-ties, like I said above. Parents save the world just when you need it most :)!!!!!! At the end of the day were emotionally and physically exhausted -- but I had a crock pot going, so we were good to go!!

Slab preperation

The process to pour a concrete slab is:

1. Gravel and level


2. Layer of foam insulation


3. Layer of 6-mil plastic
   
4. Pipes for the radiant floor heat

Of course once we finished all the prep work it rained again -- we tried our best to empty it into the pool hole with the drain (this is one reason we put the drain in).