Concrete Prep Work

I have been lazy with my construction updates lately. All the stuff that is going on in the house right now, like plumbing and ductwork, is pretty boring. It's my house and even I think it is boring. It's exciting because these are all necessary to get moved into the house but they are boring to write about and the work makes for boring photos. Boring, boring, boring.

Anyways, we have had even more progress since the last time I posted a construction update.
Our plumber is almost done the work that he can do at the moment. He has a few drains to finish up but the rest of his work is done. Our electrician is done everything that he can do until we have our interior basement walls framed. The hvac (heating guy) is out there right now laying our in-floor heating in the basement and finishing up the rest of the ductwork right now.

The Husband and I have been spending our week prepping the basement for the in-floor heating to be installed and the slab to be poured. To prep the basement floor for slabs you have to bring in gravel and bury any plumbing or heating lines that are run underground in the basement. In our case we had already brought in the gravel before the house was framed just because it was easier to bring in the gravel at the stage of construction. This resulted in us having to dig up the gravel to run the lines and then replace all the gravel. Plus we had originally added too much gravel in the basement so The Husband had to take about 85 5 gallon pails of gravel out of the basement. In hindsight perhaps it wasn't easier to bring in the gravel early.

Once all of the pipes are buried with the gravel you have to tamp and level the ground in order to prevent settling. We rented a tamper from a local rental company to do this. Tamping is required because it is supposed to help minimize the amount of settling that the ground will do. If your ground settles or moves around a lot you increase the chances of your concrete work cracking.

Once the ground is tamped, you cover the ground with poly (basically plastic sheets) and tape and overlap the seams of the poly. The poly is necessary because it will keep any moisture that seeps into the ground from being absorbed by the concrete which would then move up into the wood framing and cause rot and mould.

Because we are using in-floor heating in the basement we laid 2" styrofoam on top of the poly. This is so that all of the heat goes up into the house instead of being wasted heating the ground.

On top of the styrofoam we had to lay rebar. Rebar is long metal rods that are used to add strength to concrete. If you poured a slab without rebar in it there would be a much greater chance that the concrete would crack or break. In our case we had to lay rebar every 2' and going both vertically and horizontally.

Here is a shot of what our basement looked like part way through the rebar install:

Our concrete guy is coming on Tuesday to pour the slabs so our basement should look a little bit more like a finished space soon. 

Thanks for stopping by and reading my boring post ;).