“How’s the house coming?,” a friend in my book club asked last night at our monthly get-together. I used to dread this question, because we spent so long in design and permitting that I didn’t have much to report. This time, I lit up. “We’ve broken ground.”
Now that we have a building permit, the ground is being dug for the foundation footings.
Those are three wonderful words I’ve been wanting to say. As readers of Green House know, my husband, Alex, and I waited more than five months for a permit to build an ultra-efficient home in Falls Church, Va., a Washington suburb.
My builder Arjay West, of West Homes, wasted no time in getting started. A crew arrived within days of our June 28 permit to dig out the site, put in footings and erect aluminum forms to hold the concrete for the foundation walls.
The footings mark where the foundation walls will go.
Wow, it was fun to see the outline of the house’s basement take shape! Alex, who stopped asking much about the project during the long months waiting for a permit, now wants daily updates. He’s been in a crunch period at work so he’s not always able to get home before dark.
I drive by multiple times every day, on my way to and from the office as well as my daughter Mary’s soccer camp.
Aluminum forms that will hold the concrete are erected around the foundation’s perimeter.
I’ve been concerned about the guys working on the foundation, because it’s been so darn hot here (mid- to upper-90s, with lots of humidity.) Fortunately, they say the lot is shaded so it’s doesn’t get really toasty until later afternoon. They try to start early.
Building a custom green homes seems like a fool’s errand in such a weak economy, and we’ve definitely wondered about the wisdom of it, but I feel heartened to know we’re putting people to work. The construction industry has been hit particularly hard by the recession.
The aluminum forms start to give shape to the basement walls.
The foundation walls that won’t be sided are watersealed (on right) while the others get an exterior layer of basic CMU, concrete masonry units. The above-grade walls will get a pricier architectural CMU made from recycled ground-face concrete.
So the guys (yes, the workers have been all male so far) poured concrete into the forms and then gave it a few days to cure before removing them last week. (I regret I’ve fallen behind on my updates, because I’ve been distracted covering the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.)
Anyway, they’ve since waterproofed the walls and this week, they began adding CMU (concrete masonry units) to the exterior.
The gravel that we’ll use for drainage is recycled from the concrete that was hauled away when we deconstructed the old rambler that previously stood on the lot.
This work is basic home building — nothing particularly green. The stones that we’ll use for exterior drainage, however, were recycled from the concrete hauled away when we deconstructed the little rambler that previously sat on the lot.
Arjay West, our builder, and Heather Daley, our architect, meet every Friday at 8 a.m. to go over the project’s progress.
Also, Arjay and my architect Heather Daley are poring over detailed drawings for the SIPS or Structural Insulated Panels that will sit on top of these foundation walls. The measurements have to be exact, because SIPS are prefabricated so they’re not made to fit on site.
Because of this, we’ve had to decide where every light switch and outlet will be. Once they’re drilled into the SIPS, they can’t be changed without compromising the panels’ thermal integrity.
Of course, this is a lot more information than I told Sonia who asked “how’s the house going.” After all, we got together to discuss Julie & Julia by Julie Powell, a New York City secretary who spent a year cooking Julia Child’s recipes and blogging about them.
Our seven-member moms’ group agreed that Powell, while amusing, whined a lot, which is something I’ll try not to do as I chronicle my own project. I couldn’t help think that her year of “cooking dangerously,” as she put it, also seemed like a fool’s errand in the beginning, but it turned out all right. A comforting thought.
