Lattice Creates a Finished Look

While not an urgent thing the empty space under the deck surrounding the cottage always looked out of place (for me anyway).
I installed lattice on the deck superstructure everywhere the deck was not at least 6 foot high.  It just completes the aesthetics of the cottage and hides away the bottom part of the concrete walls under the deck.
I choose cedar lattcice for the following reasons:

• Cedar so it would weather the same way as the rest of the deck
• Lattice so the air would move freely under the deck, and thus not be a temptation for animals to use it as a home
• it was inexpensive

Do you agree with me that it finishes the Cottage?

;-)

Pressure-Treated Wood Posts

A portion of the roof, that over the gazebo, is supported by gigantic posts. The posts we are using are 6"x6" by 20 foot pressure-treated posts. These posts are supported at the bottom by concrete piers and extend through the deck off the main floor, and support the roof over the deck.

In the pictures you can see six pressure-treated ( the green coloured posts) posts: five 6x6 posts and one 8x8 post.

The 8x8 post is required for a special purpose. It is used for supporting another huge laminated beam - like that used inside the cottage to support the floor joists - except here it is used to support the deck joists.

These posts are massive. It takes at least two of my strong strapping sons to move them! The task of righting them on to the concrete piers was a difficult one.

Here is how we got them up:

1. First we carried each post to its respective concrete pier
2. A hole was drilled in one end of the post. This hole was a 3/4 hole which is just enough to allow the pin sticking out of the concrete pier to fit. The pin serves to keep the post in place.
   
3. Then we cut a piece of asphalt shingle to fit the top of the concrete pier. The asphalt shingle serves to insulate the wood post from the concrete pier thus preventing water or moisture from entering the wood. This is just like a the sill gasket we described in an earlier post to isolated the wood walls from the concrete footings or concrete wall separates the p
   
4. The end of the post with the pin hole was positioned so that as we raised the post the pin would enter the hole.
5. Then comes the tough part... Three of us - through shear muscle power - raised the post, using various assisting tools like rope and 12-foot lengths of 2x4.
   
6. Once raised into a vertical position we leveled and secured the post temporarily. Our main securing technique was to use 12- or 16-foot lengths of 2x4 to either attach the post to a nearby object like a previously secured post or the cottage itself. We would generally use two supports set at 90 degrees to temporarily secure the post. If we didn't have an object to secure it two then we would use two 2x4's set on either side of the post as about 45 degrees set in to the ground.
7. Once the work of leveling and the post was temporarily secured, it was time for a break!
8. Permanent securing consisted of connecting the post to the adjacent post using a 2-ply 2x10 beam, and then, securing it to the ledger board on the Cottage using a 2x10 joist. In this way the post was completely tied into the deck substructure.
9. This process was repeated for every post, securing post after post until the entire deck skeletal substructure was completed.
10. Once the skeleton of the deck substructure was in place then we measured out and installed joists on a 16-inch center-on-center pattern.
11. The whole process was repeated again at the very top of the posts for the posts that extended the full 20 feet. This set of beams formed the structure on which the roof would be secured.

Hence, the two-story posts were secured in three places:

• At the bottom by the pins from the concrete piers
• at the middle by the deck substructure, and
• at the top by the beams forming the support for the gazebo roof.
  

The remainder of the posts of the deck substructure only extended to the deck. Actually the posts extend three feet beyond the top of the deck so as to provide posts to which the railing will be attached.

Stay tuned: in a future post I will provide pictures of the deck substructure and the completed deck, with the gazebo...

Embedded for Life!

I was amazed how much safer the jack posts became once the concrete basement floor was poured. While we had nailed the bottom plates of the jack posts to the concrete footings they still didn't give that great Rock of Gibraltar feeling.

With at least 4 inches of concrete poured around them, they sure feel solid NOW!

10 Key Elements of a Concrete Foundation

In the previous post (see 7 steps for pouring a Concrete Foundation)I described the basic steps for building, or as they say in the industry, pouring the foundation. In this post I describe a few of the elements important in building a poured concrete foundation.

1) Excavation
The excavation is the hole that in which the foundation will be built and then filled in. It is very important for two reasons: Safety during the building of the foundation and safety of the building. During the building of the foundation the workers will be moving in and about the excavation so appropriate sloping of the excavation walls is needed to ensure the safety of the workers.

The safety of the building, and ultimately the inhabitants is secured by ensuring that the foundation is placed on ground that can support the weight. Most of the time this is accomplished by placing the footings on undisturbed earth.

2) Footings
The footings receive the load of the house through the load-bearing walls and posts. The type and size of footing is based on a number of factors including soil conditions, size of the house and slope of the site. there are three kinds of footings wall, column and stepped. This cottage foundation has all three. It is obvious that wall footings support walls. Column footings support posts which in turn support beams that support floors for instance. On steeply sloped sites, like at this site, steeped footings are used to keep the footing below the frost line.

3) The Frostline
All building codes require that the footing be placed on undisturbed soil that will be always below the frostline. Frost is nasty thing. Water in the soil if it was below the footing and froze it would expand, thus heaving and possibly cracking and otherwise destroying the foundation.

4) The Key
The key is a slot in the top of the footing to ensure a structural join with the concrete wall above it. The footings are poured and cured - usually a 2 day process before the foundation walls are poured.

5) Rebar
Other material are used to strengthen both concrete footings and walls. Long metal rods call reinforcing bars or rebar for short, usually made of cast iron and is given ridges for better frictional adhesion to the concrete, are placed in the concrete as it is poured or just after it is poured to add strength. Concrete is a material that is very strong in compression, but virtually without strength in tension. To compensate for this imbalance in concrete's behavior, rebar is cast into it to carry the tensile loads.

6) Poured Concrete Wall
This is the most visible part of the foundation. It takes the load of the house and provides the walls for most basements. Like the stepped footings, concrete walls often are stepped, roughly following the shape of the site. The missing parts of the walls are later built using lumber.

7) Window insert
How do you put a window in concrete? This is done by inserting the frame of the window with a special supporting structure temporarily replacing the glass part of the window. So the once the wall concrete forms fo the walls are taken off the window is stuck in place.

8) Anchor Bolts
Everywhere the concrete foundation meets a wood structure above it anchor bolts are embedded in the concrete so that the wooden walls can be bolted to the foundation securely.

9) Knee-wall
The part of a foundation wall, really just a thinner part of the footing that is completing buried in the soil, is often referred to a knee-wall. The knee-wall depth is determined by the depth of the frost wall. Commonly in this area knee-walls are 5 feet deep. The part of the foundation wall that seems to missing in the picture actual has a a knee-wall buried, because of the slope of the site. Remember this is the Cottage on the Edge!

10) Floor Ledge
Eventually the basement floor will be poured in concrete. that will happen after the cottage is closed in a bit more to ensure rain doesn't damage the finish of the concrete floor. The concrete will be at least 4 inches thick and will be poured above and on the portion of the footing that sticks out under the wall. But with the knee-wall the footings are 5 feet under the ground -- of a notch is created in the top of the knee-wall to act as a ledge for the concrete floor.

NEXT: finally I get to use my hammer...

7 Steps to Pouring a Concrete Foundation

When I arrived on Friday (June 6th) the foundation was poured and ready to start building. While I wasn't present for much of the time that my contractor was putting in the foundation, I did make a few trips on prior weekend to see the progress. There are 7 basic steps to creating a foundation:

1) Excavate
The hole is dug, usually using a backhoe or shovel. The whole must be bigger than the area of the foundation in order to accommodate the workers

2) Pour the Footings
The footings are created using forms, place on undisturbed ground. The footing is always wider than the concrete walls. Also a number of smaller footing to support various posts inside the cottage are also usually poured at this time.

The forms for the footing are removed the day after they are poured, but must cure for at least 720 hours. This is to ensure they are strong enough to support the poured concrete walls.

3) Pour the Concrete Walls
Like the footings, forms are used for poured concrete walls. Prefab forms are used 99% of the time. You can see the outline of the forms left in the walls in the various pictures in this post.

Again the forms are taken off and the walls are cured before the next step.

4) Wet Proof
The exterior of the foundation walls are coated with a material which seals the concrete from water. This is often a black asphalt material. Only the portion of the exterior wall to be covered by the soil needs to treated in this way.

5) Weeping tile
Another means to keep water away from the foundation, and hence out of the basement, is to surround the outside of the foundation with a weeping tile. This comes in various forms but in this installation it is a 4 inch diameter flexible pipe with lots of holes in it that is place in a cloth sleeve and covered in washed clean stone. The idea is that any water flowing in the the soil near the foundation collects in the weeping tile and is is carried away from the foundation.

6) Backfill
After the weeping tile is in and the wall wet proofed then the outside of the foundation is backfilled. The soil that is put back is graded such that it slopes away from the foundation, again to ensure water flows away from the wall.

7) Basement floor
The last part of the foundation is the basement floor. This is usually poured when the cottage is built so that the floor is covered so that rain does not ruin the finish of the floor. Most of the time this is done when the house is 'closed-in' but in our case we are going to do it once the main floor is in and covered with a tarp. The reason is that we would like to have the basement completely finished so that we can use it during the rest of the building process for storage and to allow us to continue to work if it rains.

[NOTE: as of today the basement floor has not yet been poured - we are hoping that will be done the week of June 16-20]

Next Post: We will share more details about foundations.

The Dream has become a reality! The footings are in...

I went up to the Lot today for two reasons. First reason to was to take yet again more stuff from my just sold and vacated home up to store in the sled on the Lot. My most eager reason, however, was to see the progress of Doug on putting in the foundation.

Doug started earlier in the week, on Monday, and was hoping to get the foundation walls in. Rain and other issues meant he didn't quite get that far.

But I was elated!

Seeing the hole dug for the foundation and the footings in meant that my dream was finally happening. After walking around, on and over the footings I was finally able to spot pinching myself. As you can see from the pictures in the post the footing are there as well as the drainage system around the outside of the footings.

The footings are on two levels as the cottage is being built on the side of the hill. So the foundation is not a simple 'box'.

What amazed me was the awesome amount of sand that was dug out. There was almost not enough room on the rest of the lot to place the sand temporarily. Obviously some of the sand will be used to back fill the foundation and to create a grade up to the cottage, but I hazard a guess that a good portion of the sand will have to be trucked away.

ASIDE: The sand, as the septic engineer mentions in his report (see upcoming post), is absolutely the best material for the septic system. It percolates very well.

The plan calls for the foundation walls to be poured this upcoming week, followed by the piers (sonotubes) for the deck supports.

My status update and next pictures of the foundation will be a few days after my next trip up there which will be June 6-8th - when we build the lake side wall of the basement and install the engineered floor.