November was filled with lots of progress! With today being December 1, we figured we better summarize what we were up to the last month.

We closed on our construction financing on November 5. Yay! We feel great to have a wonderful partner with Alpine Bank in Frisco. They’ve been great to work every step of the way. The construction loan is a one-year loan and once we have our home complete, it turn into a regular mortgage. The deadline to obtain our certificate of occupancy is November 5, 2019. Who doesn’t love a deadline? The idea of spending Christmas 2019 in our new home is motivation enough to me! Hello 20-foot Christmas tree!

On our way to our construction loan closing on November 5, 2018!

After we closed on the construction loan and finalized our foundation plan, we were off and moving!

To help keep this a bit more digestible, we’ll be using bullet points...otherwise, you’d be reading this blog post for the rest of your life. You’re welcome :-)

November 7 - big equipment starts arriving!

November 7: Mobilized the equipment. Our friends at Majestic Construction moved a medium and large size trackhoe to our lot
Brought in 20 yards of 2-4 inch cobble to make the vehicle track mat
Got class 1 structural fill from Grand County Gravel’s Yust pit in Kremmling to have CTL Thompson run a procter on (in more common language, make sure it was “good dirt” and would compact the way we needed it to to hold up the foundation)
Spent a day getting site ready - removing top soil, getting survey done, marking offsets, game planning
Lined up 3 trucking companies and 4 trucks to start bringing structural fill to the site. Removed and hauled off top soil to two local nurseries, 2VS and Neils Lunceford
Decided that we didn’t like the structural fill from Kremmling. Reevaluated and started to get ¾ inch class 6 road base from Schofield Gravel Pit on Tiger Road in Breckenridge
On one day, our A+ general contractor, Kelsey, made or received 45 phone calls to coordinate the trucking companies and deliveries
November 10: Started receiving the class 6 road base - 38 dump trucks worth!
Started the excavation to dig down to crawl space level (or top of footer elevation)
After the excavation of the footer trench was complete, we backfilled with the structural fill and compacted, performing multiple density tests to ensure 95-98% compaction
Over the course of the month, we bought 15 concrete curing blankets (R-7 insulated tarps, basically) Kelsey covered and uncovered the site multiple times per day - uncover to let the sun warm the ground, then cover up if it was snowing, or was night time)
November 17: We installed three helical piers at the center of the foundation to hold up the structural steel beam that goes down the middle of the house. This option ended up being less expensive that over-excavating the entire footprint of the house
Installed the stub-ups for the water and sewer lines
We enjoyed a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday break with Kelsey’s dad and his partner, Margaret. This also brought a huge snow storm + more concrete blanket moving. Dave (Kelsey’s dad) was a huge help to Kelsey by going up to the lot multiple times per day moving the blankets around and ensure things wouldn’t fly away in the strong wind. Margaret and I handled the fun stuff with the boys…like making cute treats that looked like turkeys
Kelsey met with our structural engineer the day after Thanksgiving to review the project and discuss our chimney chase dimensions, beam heights, backfill compaction, and rebar size
November 25: Purchased snowblower after we got more than a foot of snow at the lot
November 26: The ground heater from Versa Heat arrived. The ground heater is basically a diesel generator, burner, and pumps that circulate glycol at 108 degrees F through a closed-looped system to all areas of the site to ensure the ground won’t freeze and our foundation concrete cures properly
November 28 and 29: Placed the footer concrete forms. Passed the concrete footer inspection. We’ll need another footer inspection when we build our garage next spring/summer
November 30: Concrete pumper truck on site, 2 concrete trucks, poured the footer, installed rebar dowels. After the concrete was poured, the ground heater hoses were placed, with the concrete blankets on top. The concrete wall forms were also delivered
November 30 and December 1: Goal - don’t let the ground freeze! It’s crucial that the concrete cures properly and that the ground doesn’t freeze. Kelsey has been checking the ground heater every 6-8 hours to ensure it doesn’t run out of fuel and all areas of the hoses are supplying the warm fluid correctly.

In a nutshell...we’ve made multiple two trips to the building department for plan revisions, lots of dirt being hauled in and removed, three snow storms, lots and lots and lots and lots of shoveling, and finally some concrete going in!