We had the basement and garage slabs poured for the new house on Monday, June 22. This is the final step required before framing can begin.

At 7:30 that morning we heard the concrete trucks turning around just outside the house on Wildlife Trail so they could aim directly up the drive instead of having to make a sharp right-hand turn coming up from Fouche Gap Road. I walked and fed the dogs, grabbed a quick bowl of cereal and then went up to see things. David and his two helpers were about halfway through the basement pour.

In this shot you can see several significant things. First, of course, the truck is dumping concrete down the chute while one worker directs the pour and the second spreads it. The gravel base is covered with plastic. David (wearing the orange head wrap) is standing close to a screed, the long piece of metal that looks like a 2X4. Just behind the man holding the concrete chute is a depression in the gravel with two pieces of rebar (reinforcing bar), which is used to strengthen the concrete so it can support a load-bearing wall. In the foreground you can see that a cut-off plastic bucket has been placed around one of the plastic plumbing stubs. That is where a shower or tub drain can go if we ever decided to put a bathroom in the basement. The bucket allows some adjustment of the placement of the pipe if necessary. You can’t see a large metal tub that was placed around the potential future toilet flange because the flange was installed slightly too shallow. That will allow the flange to be cut off and reinstalled at the right height. The area that has no concrete because of the bucket and the tub can be filled later with concrete mix from a sack.

The two other plumbing pipes in the foreground are a main stack (draining the two bathrooms) and a shorter stub that can drain a basement bathroom sink. There is a second stub against the far wall to drain the kitchen fixtures.

What you can’t see is that the main stack and the basement sink drain are almost two feet off in placement. That happened because the plumber got his locations by measuring directly off the floor plan, which indicates that the scale is ¼ inch to the foot. Unfortunately, the floor plans did not print out at that scale, so the pipes ended up in the wrong place. It’s a glitch, but one that can be worked around. Obviously, all future measurements have to be taken directly from the plan dimensions rather than by using a ruler and scaling a foot to each quarter of an inch.

Here one of David’s workers is using a powered concrete trowel to finish the basement floor.

I didn’t stay around to watch all the pour or finishing work; it was too hot. I don’t know how David and his helpers did it. It was in the 90’s before noon, and they were working in full sunlight the whole time. And they’re all old guys (probably not as old as me, but I’m not doing concrete work). But they did it.

Our next step is finding a framer. I should have settled this weeks ago, but no. I have found three potential framers. One has given an estimate. The second, who did neighbor John’s house, picked up a set of plans Thursday and will, I hope, give us an estimate by the weekend. A third promised an estimate by Wednesday, but I haven’t received it yet.

My lack of foresight is probably going to cost us nearly a month’s delay in starting framing. I hope I can get some other work done in that time, including the well and the septic system.