Ready for concrete

The forms for the footings are all set and awaiting reasonable weather to pour the concrete. Probably Monday - the additives and techniques we're using for the concrete have a good track record down to 20 degrees, but no colder.

The footing transfers the load of the foundation and house down to the sandy soil, and is located 9' to 13' below the first floor.

We are placing a collection of artifacts under the footing for good luck. Coins include a British pound, Israeli shekel, Canadian dollar, American dollars (Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea, plus Kennedy half dollar), Jamaican dollar, a half-dollar we got in St. Lucia on our honeymoon, a T token, Korean 500 won, and a French 5 franc piece. We have a number of rocks from Lake Joseph in the Muskoka region of Canada, where my great-grandfather had a family summer home when I was growing up. And a number of shells from Cape Cod and Florida.

Measure twice, dig once

Our foundation is essentially a rectangle 25'1" by 47'4", with a diagonal of 53'6" (right?), as ably demonstrated here by the Derba Construction tape and drill team. Well, getting the foundation square and within 1/2" to meet the modulars isn't really the problem. Getting that rectangle in the right place on a site cleared of all references is the tricky part, and we screwed it up. In the absence of our surveyor, we taped it out from the street, figuring we'd be within 6" which is good enough for the footings.

Unfortunately, we took the 6" tolerance too far - the measurement was off 6", the marks were off 6", and the excavator was off 6". On a good day, some of those errors cancel. On a bad day, the error accumulates (on a really bad day, the error multiplies, but let's not go there). End result, the hole was in the wrong place. See that man at the far end? He's supposed to be in the middle of the hole.

The mistake cost us 2 days, plus we missed an ideal warm day to pour concrete. Our surveyor came by the next day and has given us proper references to work from.

Our new basement

Here's our foundation excavated to the level of the basement slab, before digging the footings. The soil is all sand with a few rocks in it.

Tall foundation

The foundation walls end up about 10' high at the back, so we're going to step them down a bit and build structural knee walls below the modules. In this picture, Terry Heinlein, Tom Chamberlin, and Joe Derba (L to R), are hashing out the details of the stepping.

Status

The house has been successfully demolished and the site cleared. On Monday we start excavating and pouring footings for the new foundation, which will be poured late this week. Once we see how that goes we'll schedule delivery of the modules, probably on/about Feb 1.

So far so good, project is on track for us to move in on May 16.

Sad?

Yes, it was difficult and sad to demolish the home in which we shared so many memories with family and friends, including our marriage and the birth of our children. We've been planning this for a long time, though, and along the way our committment has grown in many emotional and financial and logistical steps. For us, the demolition on Wednesday was another step, and not the sudden leap that observers may perceive.


There's nothing left of our house now - even the concrete rubble you see here has now been removed. But our attachment is to this place, this community, and the people who live here, and that transcends the structure of wood and concrete that has stood on the property for 80 years.

The other difficulty I'm less comfortable about is building a house during wartime. But is it really wartime? It's hard to tell, with the nation's objectives so unclear and the burden of sacrifice falling upon so few. Our president has recently called on us to "sacrifice" by watching the disturbing horrors of war on television, but we don't actually get those channels in America, and it doesn't seem much like sacrifice anyway.

What is clear is that there are far too many people in this world for whom the destruction of their home is violent, not voluntary; arbitrary, not planned. We are privileged to live in a community free of that threat, with the support of our family, friends, and neighbors. We must not forget that privilege, and work to extend it to others.

There goes the neighborhood!

Demolition movie

Here's a time-lapse movie of demolition, built from the webcam photographs.

This is an 8mb Windows media file.

Mr. Swiffer

Here's Tom Chamberlin, our project manager from Derba Construction, manning the hose in 12 degree temperatures to keep the plaster dust down.

Excavator ballet

Our excavator is Fred Hixson of Fredrickson Jones Contracting, out of Walpole at 508-668-7888. They've done an amazing job so far, making that machine almost dance, and bringing down the house with very little stray debris.

Engineering delay

We cut and capped the water and sewer lines this morning, 10 feet away from foundation as requested by Newton Engineering. But when their field guy inspected it at 2, he said they needed to be cut closer to the property line. So we have to cut and cap them again. Then in the spring we'll cut and cap them a third time at the mains under the street.

Update: at City Hall, the chief engineer confirmed that we cut them in the right place, so we're good to go first thing in the morning.

Permits approved

Our demolition and building permits were granted on Friday, so we're all ready to go. Actually the demolition permit was granted a while ago.

Energy efficiency

Aside from providing our 9 year-old with her own bedroom, and connecting the house to our back yard, a key objective of this renovation is to increase the energy efficiency of our house. We looked at fancy stuff like geothermal heat pumps and photovoltaic solar, but all those technologies are evolving rapidly, and now doesn't seem like the best time to invest. So, we're planning for what I'd call conventional "best practice" energy efficiency:

• No central air conditioning
• No fireplace or internal chimney
• Exterior 6" walls and attic insulated with Icynene
• Efficient double-pane low-E windows
• Hydronic baseboard heating, one zone per module
• High-efficiency, modulated-flame, condensing gas boiler
  
• Tankless gas domestic hot water
• Compact fluorescent and LED lighting where appropriate
  

After this renovation, our next energy priority will be to upgrade my commuting car to all-electric. By the time that's done, thin-film photovoltaic or other distributed-generation options will be available, and we'll look to make our next step.

Webcam

The webcam is running but sitting in our living room; we'll move it up to our neighbor's window this weekend.

We finally submitted the site plan yesterday, after fixing some incorrect topography in the survey. The city engineer expects to approve it this morning, and demolition should be Monday. The house core is done and supposed to be delivered last week in Jan, so it's a race to get the foundation ready.

Demolition this week

The building department has reviewed our permit applications, and with "routine" edits we'll submit tomorrow, they'll be ready to issue by Wednesday. Demolition will probably be on Thursday.