Maybe it’s just me, but I had NO IDEA that there were so many steps involved in creating a foundation for a home. I had always thought that you dug a hole, poured some concrete, put some more dirt around it and snap, done. Surely the whole thing only takes a couple of weeks, right? Well, surprise Cory, that’s not how it goes...

After the concrete forms came off, the next steps involved insulation and creating barriers and drainage for water.

First up...damp proofing (aka sticky and messy tar) beginning on December 20. Tar does not mess around. I was grateful to somehow escape helping with this job. My excuse was that I didn’t have a warm coat that I could get messy. My Dad and Kelsey came home each day covered in the stuff to the point that the clothes they wore during the tar process just got thrown away. We were going through a cold spell, so the biggest challenge they had was keeping the tar warm enough to be able to roll on the foundation walls. It took about 2.5 days to get that project done.

(side note…we have lots of pictures in this post, so I created galleries instead making you scroll down for the rest of your life. Be sure to click through to see all the pictures!)

After the yucky job of the tar rolling was done, we moved on to foam insulation! We needed to have an R15 value (thanks to dictionary.com, an R-value is the capacity of an insulating material to resist heat flow). Basically, the higher the R-value, the greater the insulating power. So, to get to that R-15 value, we had two sizes of foam, 1-inch thick and 2-inches thick. The pieces came in 4x8 sheets and were easy to cut with a utility knife. We used a circular saw to cut the 2-inch pieces. Kelsey’s mom and sister arrived in Summit the evening of December 22, so we were lucky to have a full work crew on December 23, which happened to be a beautiful bluebird day in the 30s! Working in the sun with your family may be the best thing ever.

That day the girls were in charge of cutting to sizes of foam and the boys fastened everything to the walls. With our big crew, we made pretty quick work and finished the insulation in one day.

Christmas Eve wasn’t nearly as sunny, but the next step was installing the dimple drain on the north and west walls. The dimple drain provides even more water protection for the foundation. It’s a mix of plastic and fabric and gets fastened over the foam. We needed to use 5-inch long fasteners to ensure it got secured into the foundation wall. Once again, I was happy that my job was to “hold stuff,” as the drilling process took a lot of oomph to get the fastener to take hold. We typically ski on Christmas Eve, but c'est la vie, there’s 2019!

We enjoyed a wonderful Christmas morning and then the sun came out so we figured we’d head back up to the property to do a bit of work in the afternoon. They boys finished up the last of the dimple drain, so that we would be ready for the French drain installation on the 26th.

The 26th was all about snow removal and installing the French drain. As with all of these steps, we needed to have the snow in the trench surrounding the foundation as clear as possible. Kelsey’s mom, Laurie, was still in town, so she spent the bulk of her vacation shoveling and melting snow with our trusty weed burner. Laurie, we love you so much and thank you for being so helpful and supportive!

Our excavation crew arrived in the afternoon and said we were good to start installing the French drain. A French drain is basically a 4-inch perforated flexible plastic pipe with a fabric sock over it. This pipe is laid a few inches away from the footer and is then positioned to move water away from the foundation and then downhill towards the road. Then, the pipe is covered in ¾ in washed gravel to keep it in place. As Kelsey and the our crew were working on the drain, Laurie and I were furiously shoveling and melting snow to stay ahead of them. We barely could keep ahead, but somehow between all of us hustling, we got the snow cleared and the drain installed. Go team!

On the 27th, we were prepping for backfill (the final step in the foundation process!). We had tons of piles of dirt that had been covered since the initial dig, so we had to uncover them to help the dirt dry out a bit. Of course, everything was under 18 inches - 2 feet of snow that had melted and froze again, making it super heavy! To help us out, we used the hoses from the Versa Heat ground heater one last time.

December 28 brought a fun milestone! Our friends from Versa Heat were coming to pick up the ground heater that we had used to cure concrete and help us melt snow. They were arriving around 10:30 am, so we were up at the lot bright and early to wind up the 2000’ of hoses one last time. It was a cold morning - only 9 degrees when we arrived. Winding up the hoses is hard work and quite messy, so it was good to know that we only had to do that one more time! The hoses pump 180 degree glycol through them, so when they are laid in the ground, they melt the snow, but also the dirt, so when they run through your hands it is really gross and everything gets really muddy and wet.

The close of the year was all about snow management. We were so lucky that some friends were in town to visit over the NYE weekend and lended a hand (and brought us donuts 2 days in a row!) Thank you Jen, Phil, Van, Jackie, Dave, and Josh for your help! We’re so grateful to all of you for understanding why we couldn’t play all weekend, and of course your grunt labor, encouragement, and support!

January 1 meant the first day of backfill! Our crew amazingly came to work with us that day to get the project moving. We kept working on the backfill over the first week of January. We were beyond lucky to have a weather window of no snow and bright sunshine to kick-off 2019, which made the backfill process so much easier! The last step in the backfill process was spreading a layer of gravel in our crawl space area. The gravel will help make it easier for us to work on the interior (avoiding the messy clay) and will be helpful when we do the vapor barrier inside the crawl space.

Next up….sill plate, steel beams and then floor joists and sheathing!

If you hung with me during the long (and kind of boring) post, give yourself a pat on the back. Once again, who knew there were so many steps with so much detail! Let us know if you have any questions on anything!

We hope your 2019 is off to an amazing start! And - be sure to drop us a line if you are ever in Summit County! Visitors give Kelsey a good excuse to take a break :-)

Cheers!

Cory