Pouring Concrete

The footing forms are done so the next step is to pour the concrete. Essentially we are filling the forms that we built with concrete. Before the concrete trucks come we have to lay and tie all the rebar. Rebar is basically long metal rods that are used in concrete to provide structural support. When building footings you run rebar all long the inside of your footing form. Depending on the type of construction an engineer may specify the amount and type/size of rebar required. We needed 3 15M rods in our footings. Because rebar comes as long rods you have to cut and bend them to suit the shape of your footing/your house. Everywhere that the rebar overlaps you have to tie the pieces together with a rebar tie (a metal twist tie).

I don't have pictures of our rebar because I was busy tying the rebar but here is an internet photo of what rebar in the footing looks like:

After we were done cutting, bending, laying, and tying all of the rebar we could pour the concrete. I was dreading this step. I was so not looking forward to working with concrete. Luckily I didn't have to. The brother in law came up to help for a few days and he he got here just in time to help pour the concrete. 

The concrete got poured fairly quickly and now we just have to wait for it to cure for 72 hours and then we can start putting up the foundation walls. 

Footings...grrr

For those of you who don't know, footings are essentially the support system of your house. They help transfer the load of the walls and structure of your house above into the soil below. In our case they are a concrete 'track' that run around the perimeter of our house. The walls of your house sit on the footings and obviously your roof sits on the walls. So basically if you screw up your footing, you screw up your house. In order to construct your footings you first have to build forms out of wood and then fill the forms with concrete and then remove the forms. You should then have a nice, level and square base to construct your house on. After reading/writing that I am not entirely sure why the husband and I decided to attempt these ourselves, but we did. And let me tell you, it wasn't fun. Ok, maybe for about the first 30 seconds.

In my opinion footings are the most frustrating and finicky part of the construction process. You have to get them just right or it will affect the rest of your house. This was one situation where it is a good thing that the husband is such a perfectionist. There were so many times through out the past few days where I was ready to just throw in the towel and say "who cares if the footings aren't square!" (That would have been really bad, by the way) but the husband, no matter how frustrated we got and how many hammers were thrown, stuck to his guns to make these footings, our house, the best that he possibly could. 

Outside of the footing is complete! 

Over a month later...

we have barely got started. We officially got up here on July 25th. It feels like it has done nothing but rain since July 25th.

So far we have mowed the acreage, cleaned up the old house that was on the lot, cleared some trees, staked out, ATCO installed our brand new power pole, and we've excavated (well, technically Dave the excavator did the excavating).

We just got started on the forms for the footings but guess what? It started raining.  Shocker! Hopefully this weekend we will get the forms done (who doesn't want to spend their long weekend building forms?).

And for your viewing pleasure, some construction shots: