Prepping a house site and building a house

[materthegreater]

Nice work Columbo!

 

[Columbo]

Love seeing how people have to build in different parts of the country and the world. Never seen pre-cast deck footings like those, understand the reason just never thought about pre-cast footings like that.

Here our "frost line" is 1' which is laughable as it never freezes for more than an inch or 2 and only for a few days. A 2x2 footing 18" thick is all that is needed. I'm going to run the house footings continuous around the covered porch outline, pour 2x2 pads 1' thick on top of that and set the 4" steel columns the pads.

Kicking back and forth between a steel frame with metal pan and concrete deck or PT SYP wood deck. We have enough I-beams from salvage jobs for the frame.

Yeah those precast piers are 5’, the make a 4’ option too. My brother installed the 4’ ones at his house nearby and they lifted one winter; so I went with the 5’ ones and crushed stone to be safe. A lot of the cost and aggravation of the site work around here seems to be directly connected to the cold winters and wet summers.

I like the idea of the concrete deck- maintenance free! I had thought of something similar for the wrap around porch but decided against it due to cost and the site limitations. Looking forward to seeing yours when you do it.

 

[skyking1]

I'm going to limit the decks/flatwork on our new house until I get a certificate of occupancy, and think about it. We may have some paver areas.
We have the frost depth of @CM1995 and only 16" of annual rainfall, so whatever we do won't get beat up too much.

 

[CM1995]

and only 16" of annual rainfall, so whatever we do won't get beat up too much.

Wow only 16"? We receive around 55" per year on average.

 

[Columbo]

I’d be pretty happy with 16” of rainfall annually right now… we had over 12” in July alone!

 

[Columbo]

I’ve been burning the candle at both ends, so I haven’t posted an update in awhile. I’ve finally moved on to the framing, first floor deck is done and I’ll start the walls tomorrow! Floors were all framed with wooden I joists.









As the framing progresses I still need to stack the rock retaining wall behind the house and also put in the septic tank. So, more dirt work is coming!

 

[CM1995]

Awesome!

I-joists and parallam beams and girders are the way to go for a wood floor system.

Wife and I are planning a meeting with local building dept and sending our HOA info this week. It's getting real and your project progression has me ready to go.

 

[Columbo]

I took the past week off and finished the first floor framing (except for a few partition walls I’ll add later). I was working mostly alone, fortunately my brother was on a job done the road from me so he could come by to help me lift the walls once I had them framed. Two wall jacks made quick work of it. Hopefully I will have the second floor deck done this upcoming weekend and can the jump on the second floor walls. I have a tentative truss date of 9/15 and winter is coming…

 

[CM1995]

Nice work.

Advantech subfloor is a fantastic product. Put down around 120K SF of it on a townhome project back in the mid 2000's.

Also planning on using the Zip-System for sheathing and maybe for roof sheathing. The red/brown sheets are 5/8" and the green is 7/16"?

Interesting side note - here we use random length 2x4's for bracing with a 2x4 block nailed to the floor. I like your metal bracing. That looks similar to the screw jacks for forming concrete just longer.

Fond childhood memories of being part of the crew raising fully built walls complete with windows, siding, facia and cornice. My father was a framing contractor in his early career.

 

[Columbo]

The brown Zip is either 5/8” or 1/2”, it was explained to me that the brown coating shows that the panel is rated for roof sheathing while the green coating is 7/16” and for wall sheathing only. As this house is framed at 24” centers I used 1/2” Zip on the walls and will step up to 5/8” with H clips for the roof.

The wall bracing came with the wall jacks I bought off of Facebook, they work just as you described. Super easy to use and I could plumb and straighten the walls single-handedly.

 

[kshansen]

Curious question you may have covered but I missed - No protection board over the asphalt waterproofing on the foundation walls? Here we use a foam or fiber board or plastic sheets like real estate signs are made from in order to protect the asphalt from damage during backfill.

Not sure if that protection board over asphalt is something new, well that might be a relative term as my house was built in 1978.

As for the front or rear discharge trucks I would say most around here in Central NY are front with a few rear discharge.

 

[CM1995]

Not sure if that protection board over asphalt is something new, well that might be a relative term as my house was built in 1978.

Standard practice here for the poured wall contractors to also have perform the water proofing. Liquid asphalt, fiber/foam protection board, 4" perf pipe and stone.

Poured walls came into the scene in the mid '80's here. Before that was CMU with a mortar parge, hydroside and 6 MIl poly for water proofing. One of my first real jobs was waterproofing an 8' tall CMU foundation wall...never forget that first glimpse at hades...

 

[Columbo]

I finished framing the second floor exterior walls today, now I’m moving on to the garage. Trusses get delivered on the 25th and the crane is scheduled for the 28th.

Tomorrow the remnants of hurricane Lee is going to come through so I expect it will be windy enough I won’t be putting up garage walls. Hopefully I can make some progress getting a wall framed and ready to lift.

 

[skyking1]

you are going great guns man. Thanks for the inspiration.

 

[Columbo]

Thanks! Sometimes the progress feels slow so I appreciate the encouragement! I’m mostly working alone with an occasional helper to assist in lifting the walls when they are complete.

 

[kshansen]

Seeing how things are done in other areas and in the last few years I often wish I knew about some of this stuff back in the 1970's.

When we built this place we did have all kinds of help from one uncle who had been building houses from the early 1950's and a friend who also worked in the housing trades for that long. About the only thing we did somewhat advanced for the time was to use 2X6's on 24 inch centers to get a bit better "R" factor in the insulation on exterior walls.

 

[Columbo]

Who says you can’t use an excavator to frame the garage…. I assembled each section of wall on the ground and then lifted them into place. The panels were 12-16’ long each. Today I put up the headers over the garage doors, I’ll finish up the garage framing this weekend.

 

[CM1995]

Looking good!

Work smarter not harder. Your 311 is paying off in spades.

Nice clean and tight job site with the tools to build the job. Have you considered becoming a custom home builder?

 

[Columbo]

Looking good!

Work smarter not harder. Your 311 is paying off in spades.

Nice clean and tight job site with the tools to build the job. Have you considered becoming a custom home builder?

Thank you for the compliment! That means a lot! When I was younger I was planning on going into home building full time but then I saw how every one of my bosses had numerous joint and back problems by 45-50. So I opted not to make a career out of construction. I do miss it though and I have to find projects to keep me busy. My first house I bought as a foreclosure and flipped, the second one was a complete top to bottom remodel and now this one should keep me busy for a few more years lol!

 

[Columbo]

Today was a good day, we got all the trusses up and installed for both the house and garage. Rake overhangs too. Tomorrow I am planning to wrap up a few loose ends and then start on the roof sheathing.