Other than losing our minds over the financial impacts, just what have we been up to? The foundation walls went up several weeks back and we’ve been waiting to get on our framer’s calendar. During that time we have had various required odds and ends to complete.  We ran the main water supply line under the footings and the sewer line through the foundation. We also connected up a pipe to carry any radon gas (common in our area) up from below the house and safely beyond the roof. And we’ve hooked up a sump pump, though the power is obviously jury-rigged. You can see most of these hiding in the pictures below.

One of the larger projects we had to do was install XPS foam insulation under the basement slab. This was a full family project, with the kids hauling the boards over to the wall, Amy passing them over from inside the breezeway, and Jim catching them down below. Then we took turns raking rock, cutting boards, and fitting them all into place. It also took a team effort of all 4 of us to roll out the huge sheets of plastic that form the vapor barrier over the whole thing.

You super greens out there may notice that our subslab insulation doesn’t cover over the footings like it probably ought to. Our foundation crew left us 2″ for the insulation and I didn’t want to delay the whole project to have them back out with another $1000 of pea gravel to fill up the difference, and then shorten the total basement height inside, etc. So we’ll sacrifice some thermal efficiency to bridging from the footings to the slab.

Other things you can’t see include us driving all over looking at brick buildings, hemming and hawing about which one is too purple toned, or has too many high contrast bricks scattered in. Also meticulously going over every tiny detail of quotes on exterior doors, trying to decipher the order form for special brick ties, availing ourselves of the University library for obscure HVAC reference manuals, and other acts of mental plate spinning that have left me a drooling idiot by week’s end.

That’s all for now, but with any luck we’ll soon see frame walls going up and this underground bunker will start to look more like a house.  This big framing crew that’s been kicking me around says they can put these walls together in 6 hours in their factory, and I’ve seen them crane the walls onto a site in what looks like fast-motion video. So hopefully once they get started it’ll pop right up. Fingers crossed!