Week 3: Schedule

During Week #2 of construction, we pretty much achieved everything we were hoping to. The footers and walls were poured, which is what we were hoping to accomplish, though we haven’t yet taken the wall forms off. This will happen Monday morning, which should pretty much put us back on schedule.

During Week #3, the plan is to keep moving on foundation work. The schedule calls for foundation to finish by the end of week #3, but we’re going to lose Friday to the holiday and we’d likely need an extra day or two anyway, so we’ll be eating into next week. And given that the framing crew may not want to start mid-week, we’ll probably lose a whole week on our schedule. Not great, but the foundation work is the one part of this whole thing that’s completely new to me, so I’m not surprised that I underestimated the schedule.

Here is what we’re looking like in terms of schedule for this week:

1. Remove Wall Forms: On Monday morning, our foundation company will remove the wall forms.
2. Waterproof the Walls: On Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning, the foundation company will waterproof the exterior of the foundation walls.
3. Install Drain Tile: On Tuesday, the foundation company will install the drain tile. This is the french drain that runs around the perimeter of the foundation and should drain any water that ever gets around the foundation. This will help protect the foundation from bowing or cracking far into the future. Here’s a great video tutorial.
4. Waterproofing Inspection: After the waterproofing and drain tile are completed, a county inspector will verify and sign off.
5. Complete Plumbing Ground Work: On Tuesday or Wednesday, the plumbing company will come in and run the drain from teh areaway (the walkway down to the basement from the exterior) to the sump pump. This keeps water from sitting in the walk-down area, and this drain must run under the slab. Also the plumbing company will install a condensate line under the ground to allow the water heater and HVAC system someplace to drain.
6. Plumbing Inspection for Ground Work: Once the plumbing work is completed, it will be inspected an signed off on by the county inspector.
7. Termite Pre-Treatment: On Tuesday morning, our termite company will do our termite pre-treatment.
8. Start Backfill Required for Flat-Work: I’m not sure if it will happen this week or not, but the next task will be back-filling a bunch of dirt into the garage and front porch areas. These areas were where the old basement used to be, and was been dug out down to about 9′ down when the old basement was removed. We want to pour concrete there for the garage and front porch, so we need to fill in a lot of dirt to bring it up to ground level for the slabs. I’m not sure if this is a one or two-day job, but could very well go into next week.

Once all that work is done, we’ll still need two days for concrete “flat work” (pouring the garage slab, the basement slab, the front porch slab and steps and the areaway steps). After that, all that’s left is filling back in the dirt around the foundation (“backfilling”) which may be done before the framing starts or may wait until after.