Wahoo!
A day to celebrate, the pouring of the foundation for Herons’ House. Getting out of the ground is always the hardest part of a house building project. The pouring of the slab marks a transition, from soils/concrete/masonry to lumber, carpentry and framing.
To give you an idea of how long it takes to get out of the ground, We started the design in January, as part of that process we hired a soils engineer and received his recommendation in late February. With that critical information the house design is completed and sent off to the engineer who incorporates the soils information into his calculations and recommendations. Final design then assembles that information into the architectural plans and is submitted to the city as an integrated package.
Plans were approved in mid August and excavation began in late August. 8 weeks later we are out of the ground. That is a total of 10 months from the beginning of design, to ready to frame. Believe it or not, that is almost unheard of in terms of quickness and speaks to ability of the design team to blend multiple inputs seamlessly. Good weather, good plans and a lot of hard work by skilled craftsmen are also equally responsible.
The slab pour included 84 yards of concrete, 4 finishers, 1 dozen doughnuts and an 18 pack of Coors light! The hole in the slab that you can see in one of the pictures is the elevator pit.
