Foundation Walls

Typically in Canada foundation walls are constructed out of an 8"concrete wall with a 2x4 wood framed wall on the inside to allow for insulation (you put the insulation in the 2x4 wall). We decided to try out a relatively new product which we thought for a little extra money would save us a bunch of time. It didn't.

As of right now we aren't overly impressed with the company so I am unsure if I want to the use their name yet or not but the product is basically pre-cut panels that are made specifically to your plans. The panels are constructed out of steel studs and styrofoam. The installation method is pretty simple (in theory), you attach a metal track to the top of your footing and then screw in the  panels to the track and then attach another track along the top of the panels and then attach a wood sill plate to the top of that track so that you can later attach your wood framed walls. The company claimed that you can install a full basement in 3 days with a crew of 3 guys with little to no construction experience. Now in the company's defence they could possibly mean a 4 sided house with 4 corners. Our house is a 5 level split with 27 corners (our foundation has 2 different levels). It took us 2-3 (at times) experienced men with some help from my mom and myself about 2 weeks to get our foundation up.

Some of this delay is due to our house plan, we will take total responsibility for this. We love our house plan and feel that it's work a few extra headaches. Some of it however is due to errors on behalf of the company. I don't want to get into in great detail but basically 10% of our order was messed up. Either the panels were not built correctly, or the were too short, or not wide enough, or they were missing all together. We notified the company that these panels were wrong. They remade the panels quickly and our sales rep delivered them himself. Great, things are going good. We go to put on the new, fixed panels, and they are still wrong. We contact the company to inform them of the new mistakes and as of right now they seem to be refusing to remake the panels to the correct size. Hopefully I will have an update on this soon.

Some pictures of our basement going up:

Panel delivery - that's a lot of styrofoam! 

First wall going up

Wall sitting in the 'track'

the 'track' on the footing