Category: house (Page 8 of 8)

A House – Update IV – Foundation Piers Complete!

December 13, 2009 / David & Susan Sifford / 12 Comments

Apparently, concrete doesn’t cure as well in colder weather as it does when it’s warmer. From what I’ve read, it’s not ideal to pour standard concrete in “cold weather,” which is defined as three consecutive days with lows and highs in the 40-50 degrees F range. And my understanding is that freezing weather is not good for the setting of new concrete. So, I’ve been trying to beat Winter in building our concrete piers for the foundation of our house.

Well, even though things started to cool down with the weather quite a bit, I learned there are some things you can do to allow you to go ahead and pour anyway, if the temperatures aren’t too low. You can add more cement, and you can warm the concrete mixture (I suppose this is more applicable if you’re having concrete delivered). You can also attempt to keep the poured concrete warm with blankets, and even heaters, if necessary.

And so, for the last several piers, I covered or wrapped them in blankets in the evening after the pour. For the upper part of the pier, I would let the piece of board holding the bolt in place remain there for two days before removing it (whereas before I was only keeping it there for one day). And then, if the sun came out, I would uncover the concrete to let the sunshine in:

Throughout building these piers, I had no trouble with the concrete tubes. On the second to the last pier, after finishing the top part and setting the bolt in place, I was cleaning up; and I turned around, and the concrete had sunk probably 3/4″ down. I wondered what was happening; and when I looked, the bottom of the tube had cracked open, and the concrete was pushing out. Oh no. I didn’t know what to do. Should I pull the concrete tube and try to salvage the concrete, quickly cut another tube, and put the concrete back? But I figured that was going to be difficult to even physically accomplish, and the whole area would be difficult to reset with the amount of concrete used (the tube was nearly 3′ tall), among other potential problems. And so, I ran and got the duct tape and taped around the break to try to “stop the bleeding.” I had to pull the pier back up to being level too and reset the wood bracing form to hold it upright. And then, I just put more concrete on top. It sank some more, and I had to add concrete again; but after that, things seemed to set. And it appears to have worked ok. Thanks to the Lord for granting that!

And with that pier done, it was on to the last pier. Here it is!

And here’s me prepping it for cold weather:

This is me reading it a bedtime story from its favorite book, after tucking it in for the night:

After 38 piers, using 312 1/2 bags of concrete, all mixed with water by hand, the piers for the pier and beam foundation of our house are finished!

This is a view from the north:

And this is from the east:

We thank the Lord for granting us the provisions and strength to work on the house.

— David

A House – Update III – Root Cellar/Storm Shelter

November 19, 2009 / David & Susan Sifford / 8 Comments

Part of the house design was to have a root cellar/storm shelter in the vicinity. I wanted to have house access to it so it would be quick and convenient to be able to get into in an emergency. In thinking about designs, I had hoped to not interfere with the layout of the foundation piers as much as possible. And so, the plan was to dig out the main area of the cellar under where the porch is to be, have the landing area go between two piers, and then have the entrance way under the actual house structure; this would allow for the cellar to be covered by structure (the porch), easy entrance from within the house, and the foundation to continue to be laid out as it was without having to add piers or other modifications to it.

I decided to hire a contractor to do the digging, partially because the hole needed to be dug fairly precisely since the landing was going between the two piers, and also so I wouldn’t have to deal with damage that might happen to the equipment. But, after several weeks of delay with an inattentive contractor, I decided to just rent a backhoe and do it myself.

And so, here I am starting the digging process:

Well, not more than a few feet down I hit that rock layer that I’ve been setting the piers on. I thought for sure I’d be able to get through it with a backhoe, but one by one the teeth caps on the backhoe bucket started to break off. I went through several before stopping. We thought about it and then came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth proceeding because more possible damage could happen; I could possibly disturb the ground under the piers, thereby potentially weakening the house structure; and we already have a root cellar/storm shelter. So I filled back in what I had already dug, and parked the backhoe.

We had to pay for the damages, but the folks from whom I rented the backhoe went out of their way to help us. We rented from iRent in Brownwood, TX, and Milt the manager there really helped us in diminishing the fees as much as possible. He was a breath of fresh air in customer service, especially given our experience with the local contractor noted above.

I lost about a month of time with all of this but have restarted the foundation building process, and here is where it is currently…only five piers left!

Thanks again to Milt at iRent for his excellent customer service; and we again thank the Lord for His graces, mercies, wisdom in and sovereign power over all circumstances.

— David

A House – Update II – Foundation

August 19, 2009 / David & Susan Sifford / 14 Comments

We just wanted to catch you up on the progress of the house the Lord is granting that we be able to build right now.

I decided to use a pier and beam foundation, using 12 inch concrete piers.

And here is the first hole! I’ve found that below the surface is a layer of boulder rocks; and so I’ve been digging down to that point and leaving them so the piers will sit on the rock, hopefully creating a more firm foundation:

I cut rebar pieces and pounded them into the sides of the hole in eight places to help hold the pier in the ground against any lift that might occur:

And I tied them together with cross pieces so they act as a single piece in the concrete:

Here I tied in some vertical rebar pieces that would actually stick up into the pier:

And here is the base after the concrete pour:

For the pier part, I decided to use concrete tube forms. We’re finding the height of each tube by using a water level, which is just clear, plastic tubing with water in it. One person takes one end to an already established pier, the other person the other end to a leveled, empty concrete tube in place on the concrete base. The person next to the unfilled concrete tube gets in place, and the person at the established pier moves the tube up and down until their water level is level with the top of the pier. Then, the other person marks the concrete tube where their water line is showing. We’re doing this on four places on the tube, then marking a line all the way around the concrete tube and cutting it to size on that line. Also, we take each measurement from the same pier so that any error introduced only affects the new pier and doesn’t compound from pier to pier:

Once the tube is cut to the proper height, it is re-leveled on the concrete base and held in place by a wood form and stakes pounded into the ground:

This is the bolt that is set in the concrete which will hold on the brace which holds the beam. I tied in a couple of small pieces of rebar at the bottom to a washer held on by a nut to better lock it into the concrete:

And here the bolt is ready to be set into the concrete using the plywood to hold it “suspended” in the concrete:

Here is the pier after the concrete pour with the bolt set into place:

I decided to do the first two front corner piers so I could run a string between them so as to be able to line up the whole row of piers:

And here is the first row completed!

This past first Wednesday of the month was our community work day, and the men helped us with our foundation work. We poured a pier and three new bases:

I decided to complete the other two corners so I could have straight lines for all of the other outside piers, and here is where we are now:

We are again grateful to God for the provisions, ability and community to work on the house.

— David

A House – Update I – Kindle Care

June 5, 2009 / David & Susan Sifford / 2 Comments

A couple mornings after some pretty good soaking rains, with dew on the ground, vegetation being green, and only a slight southerly breeze expected (which would blow away from the wooded area behind the clearing), we decided it might be a good time to burn down the left-over wood pile collected from clearing the trees. And so, I grabbed the diesel containers, doused one end (I was hoping to have it burn very slowly from one end to the other and thus didn’t pour diesel all over the pile), said a prayer asking God that we not burn the place down, and lit it. Meanwhile, Sue started filling water containers to have around the fire, and I got some shovels and rolled the generator into position next to the well and hooked up and strung out several hoses in case they were needed. Once the fire started to go, I figured there was no turning back.

There was a slight north breeze to start (which was blowing into the side where I started), and that helped burn things down a little quicker, but was also into the direction of the woods. However, the fire maintained a slow burn as I monitored it, and I would pour diesel on the edges to try to keep them going as the middle was burning out nicely. Eventually the breeze changed to southerly and (easterly and westerly at times), which at least brought a little more of a comfort level.

Here is the fire about half way done. I did have to put out a little fire that started to crawl away from the main fire, but easily did so, thankfully, with a shovel and some water:

And here it is burned down. It smoldered for a couple of days, which I was hoping would help burn down the stumps more. We could see the coals glowing at night, and we prayed they would stay put. A couple of nights later, some thunderstorms blew through bringing some heavy winds, which really whipped up the sparks and cinders from what was still hot, but it had been raining already pretty heavily, and so we weren’t too worried, although we prayed some more that the fire wouldn’t ignite somewhere else on the land:

We burn a lot of our garbage, and whenever I interact with a fire and how hot it is, I think of things spiritual regarding fire:

(It was a little hard to understand one part, and I wanted to clarify: the words are, “…how the Bible talks about the eternal torment in flame, in hell, for those who aren’t saved, who don’t fall at the foot of Christ for salvation, and Christ alone, and His righteousness…” Very important!)

We are thankful to God for allowing us the opportunity to burn down the wood pile and continue the house project, and we are very grateful He in His mercy kept us from making mistakes with the fire, held the wind back, and kept the fire in control.

— David

A House

May 18, 2009 / David & Susan Sifford / 7 Comments

Now that several of the larger, what we would call important, projects have been fairly completed, the Lord has graciously granted us the resources to be able to begin working on a house. We hope to have a very simple, southern-styled one, with fireplaces for warmth, and no electricity.

And so the ground-breaking began. Here is the site before any clearing: