My timber frame build

[Magicman]

It will clear up soon!

smiley_dizzy  I'm glad.

[Ljohnsaw]

Update 8/31/2016:

It will clear up soon!

smiley_dizzy  I'm glad.

Hopefully this will help.  Here is the east wall completed:

 

The cabin will be on the slightly taller right portion (4 courses added today).  The porch will be on the lower left portion (2 courses added today).

 

I also finished the front part of the first three courses on the west wall.  Next week, finish the west wall and the little bit left of the north and south walls.

 
(pretty fancy scaffolding there...)

[Magicman]

Oh I am completely fascinated by this foundation work.  I am remembering back when I was smearing some cement on the ground, laying a couple of re-bars, and then laying a few courses of cement blocks for my foundation. (fourth picture) LINK  ;D

[Czech_Made]

It reminds me of Maginot Line  ;D ;D

[Ljohnsaw]

Update 9/6/2016:

Spent a little time on Sunday gathering up some larger rocks/boulders for the east wall.  Today, I finished up the west wall:

 

 

Now I just have to finish the middle buttress wall for the porch and the section between the two glass block windows in the north wall.

[fishfighter]

When you were a kid, you had to play a lot with lego blocks. :D

[Ljohnsaw]

When you were a kid, you had to play a lot with lego blocks. :D

Sure did (and I still do!) :D

[fishfighter]

Yep, my grandson has those DanG land mines all over the house. :D

[Ljohnsaw]

Update 9/14/2016:

Back at it.  Installed the blocks on the center support for the porch.  Tomorrow I will put up some temporary shoring to hold the lintel blocks over the two doors.  Should be enough time to do the back windows as well.  Then I just need to plumb up the top sections of walls I just finished (south, west and north).  That is my 4'x8' portable scaffold on the SkyTrac.  Sure makes life easier, though I wish I made it 10 or 12' long.

 

 

[Magicman]

It's good to see you well enough to make some progress again.

[Ljohnsaw]

Update 9/15/2016:

Yep, it was good to go stretch out the muscles again.

Spent another 6 hours to get what looks like a little bit done.  Put up a support to hold the blocks for the man-door lintel.  I didn't have time or the materials to do the garage door opening on the far left.

 

I don't think I ever showed the specifics of the blocks.  The top row of blocks I've removed the insulation so I have a continuous concrete sill.  If I didn't, water could travel down through the insulation.  Here is a normal block.  Number 5 rebar is strung vertically in each cell (in my case) and number 4 horizontally every other row.  The next layer the blocks are inverted and that makes an opening for the concrete to connect the columns.  This happens to be the top of the porch support walls so the vertical rebar stops below the top and they will have a "half" beam.  You can see a vertical rib in the block that holds the insulation block in place.   In the front most cell you can see the yellow rockwool of the block below.

 

For the top course over openings, you make a reinforced lintel.  The cutouts are enlarged so there is a larger concrete beam.  My engineer also wanted the single #4 rebar upgraded to 4 (FOUR) #5 bars!

 

I had to enlarge a lot of cutouts.  I used up all three of my big batteries on my saws-all.

 

I also dis-assembled a lot of scaffolding planks I made up of my old form boards that I milled last year.  Most had either bowed, warped or twisted.  Next week I'm going to resaw them straight to use for the garage door lintel as well as the north wall window openings.

[Ljohnsaw]

Update 9/19-20/2016:

Forgot my camera yesterday but I finished the front doorways:

 

Today, I finished up the back (north) wall windows.  They will be glass block so the basement isn't totally dark (during the day).

 

After that, I had to drill 3" holes for the anchor bolts that will hold the ledgers that will support the floor joists.  I'm taking the lazy/easy way out.  Instead of cutting slots in the sills to support the joists, I'm using ledgers.  The specification is to place an anchor bolt every 24" with a 3" hole for the concrete to fill around.  The ledger boards will be temporarily held up with 4" screws into the Faswall blocks.

Template

 

 

 

50 holes in 60 minutes.

Tomorrow is time to cut up some cedar for the ledger boards.  I think I'm going to make them 3" x 10" - just because I can!

[Czech_Made]

That jig - what a clever idea!

[Ljohnsaw]

That jig - what a clever idea!

Yeah, without it, it is really hard to start the hole cutting saw where your want it to be.

Update 9/29/2016:

I was up a few more times last week and earlier this week.  Last Thursday (9/22), the sky clouded over, turned a little green then KaBoom - a thunderstorm broke loose while I was milling up some boards.  Light hail gradually turned to very heavy hail over a 10 minute span and then 30 seconds of rain. This past Tuesday and Wednesday I cut and installed the ledgers and some of the anchor bolts.  Today, finished up the anchor bolts (Today had to buy twelve 5/8 x 16" hot dipped for $122!!), laid the re-mesh for the slab and cleaned up.  So here are the ledgers installed along with all the 5/8" anchor bolts for the main sills as well as the porch sills.  Ended up doing 2½ x 10 x 17'-6" for the ledgers.  Man, green wood is HEAVY!  But after sitting a day, they loose a lot of moisture - close to half the weight.

 

 

 

The vertical straps will attach to the posts at each location.  There are 5 on each side wall and one in the center of both the front and back walls.  One of the reject ledger boards was used to form up the end of the slab in the front doorways.

 

Inspection scheduled for Monday, 10/3. :-\  Snow is predicted for Sunday...

[Ljohnsaw]

Update 10/3/2016:

Well, it did snow on Sunday (neighbor was up and reported heavy snow coming down) and radar showed very heavy rain in the evening.  Today there was just enough snow that I could not move my Skytrac (no tread) and it alternated between flurries and drizzle all day long.  Nearly all the snow melted.

The inspector came up (with a second inspector) and had one question (pointing at my cedar ledgers) - "Why didn't you use green stick (Pressure Treated?) ?"  I just said because the plans call for cedar.  They poked around a bit and signed off! 8)

Now to schedule concrete before the real snow comes!

[danreed76]

Looks great!  And congratulations on another completed inspection!

Just a quick observation... looking at that board across the front of the doorways, is that rebar supporting it just driven in the ground with wood wedged between?  Seen similar fail a time or two; might want to throw some kickers up against it before you pour.

My engineer beefed up our lintels as well vs what the ICF manufacturer's recommended.  There's a lot of comfort in a little extra steel!

-Dan

[Ljohnsaw]

Looks great!  And congratulations on another completed inspection!

Just a quick observation... looking at that board across the front of the doorways, is that rebar supporting it just driven in the ground with wood wedged between?  Seen similar fail a time or two; might want to throw some kickers up against it before you pour.

My engineer beefed up our lintels as well vs what the ICF manufacturer's recommended.  There's a lot of comfort in a little extra steel!

-Dan

Those are foundation stakes plus the form board is also screwed to the blocks.  Yes, I will put some kickers before the slab pour but the walls come first.  Yep, lots of extra steel.  I have a lot of 1/2" leftover somehow so I will be laying that out for the slab just to be rid of it :D

[Ljohnsaw]

Getting things ready for the wall pour on Friday at 0700.  Moved a bit of dirt.  This is what the west wall looked like back in July.

 

And now...

 

I guess I can't hold a camera plumb - the walls are really vertical :

Dumped a little dirt in under the porch area so I can set up some scaffolding (my home-made ones)

 

 

Way in the back on the north wall, you can see some ledgers under the window openings.  I put those up yesterday after the inspectors left.  That will be used to support a ceiling over the water tanks to make a smaller room.  Hopefully, the ground heat can keep the water from freezing.  It will be heavily insulated.  A neighbor with a similar setup has never had his water freeze.

Tomorrow is finish setting up the scaffolding and install some braces to hold the walls plumb for when we pour.

[thecfarm]

Way in the back on the north wall, you can see some ledgers under the window openings.

I copied this part.
Plan on putting cement on the floor?
I have a root cellar under the sun room. It's about 12X16 feet. I put stones down on the floor and used 2 inch blue styrofoam for the sides and the top. Wanted a constant temp in there. In your case you would not have to insulate the ceiling. Any heat would be going up into your living space??? Most times it stays around 46°. When it's down in the below zero temps it drops down to 42°. The ground keeps the temp warm in there. There is no cement on the floor is what does it. I had the contractor Father coach me on this. I went and saw his root cellar and did the same thing. 

[Ljohnsaw]

My cabin neighbor cemented his but only because he was on a solid granite ledge and wanted it level.  No, I'm just leaving gravel in that lower part for the tanks and is about 3' below grade.  That is about 160 sq-ft where the "garage" portion is 1,000 sq-ft of cement.  I figure I would isolate that area from temperature swings when I open the garage to get the toys out in the winter.  I might do an experiment and not insulate and put a temperature prob in there to watch it.

[thecfarm]

I would say my root cellar must be 6 feet below grade with about 2 feet of cement above ground.
I have a outdoor thermometer in the root cellar with the readout in the basement.
Seem like when I worked for the low income for the state,a training course told us 8 inches of concrete has just about the same insulation value as a single pane of glass.

[Ljohnsaw]

Update 10/7/2016:

No pictures because it doesn't look much different other than some spilled concrete.  Filled the blocks today starting at 0730.  Ordered up 15 yards and had about 1½ to 2 yards left over.  Trucks and pumper gone by 10.  As it turns out, ended up needing some of it.  On the last wall poured, the pumper guy messed up a little.  The concrete got hung up on the load of rebar at the top and plugged up.  He just figured it was full.  When I rodded it, my rebar stick dropped down the full 6 feet in 4 or 5 cores.  Had to haul up a number of buckets of concrete from the dump pile.  That took an extra hour or so messing with those - sure wears you out.  Slab sometime next week but rain is predicted for Wednesday.

[Ljohnsaw]

Update 10/12/2016:

Final concrete pour today - finished the slab. 8)

I've been known to over-complicate things and make more work for myself.  Well, I had a LOT of rebar left over and I really don't like 6x6 remesh and how it usually gets left at the bottom of the concrete.  So, I laid out a 12" x 14" grid of #4 and some #5 rebar.  Something like 40 sticks laid across and 20 lengthwise (x2).  Then I laid the remesh on top of that.  All of it was on about 280 doobie blocks.  Spent probably 8 or 9 hours setting that up :-\  My hamstrings are letting me know all about it! :D

Forgot to snap a picture of just the steel so here is the progress where you can see some of it up front:

 

 

 

First float in the front, first trowel in the back.

About 5 hours after we finished the pour, final troweling down!


 

 

 

The obligatory signing - Me, my daughter and my son.

 

I hired the finish work out.  I can do a rough finish that is fairly flat, but I wanted this to look good and I like it!  It's just hard to pay someone when I'm used to doing everything myself. ;)

Oh, yeah.  I calculated the concrete at 11.9 yards.  On my other runs, I ended up with 2 or 3 yards left over :  So I ordered 13.  Then I upped it to 14 yards last night.  We had about 1 shovel full left over

[Brian_Weekley]

That's a major accomplishment.  Congrats!  Looking forward to the rest of the build.   8)

[fishfighter]

That's a major accomplishment.  Congrats!  Looking forward to the rest of the build.   8)

This and is it time for lumber? :D