1st course

The first course of Flexcrete is done! This course got the mortar joint underneath so required the extra step of mixing mortar.

This is the same short wall from the "Corners Post." As you can see, we cut a small block to fit the space.

Basically how things look at the moment. The first three courses have the most cutting and fitting to do because of all the electrical outlets. After that, I'm hoping the middle courses go faster.

Pulling wire

So here we are at the main panel. Above my head is a spool of aluminum wire which will carry power to our house. The smaller cable is the ground.

Kristi and Bill at the sub panel. This is over 200 feet away from the main panel. The way we did this is as follows. First, we use a shopvac to run jetline through the conduit. Jetline is a lightweight, but very strong cord. Once that is through we cut it and tie a rope to the jetline and pull that through. Now that the rope is through, we attach the wire and cable. This is where the equipment comes in. The wire is very heavy, so Kristi would pull about 5 feet at a time as I guided it through.

 Conduit at the sub panel after pulling the wire

Installing the sub panel. 

So 2001

Corners

It all starts with laying the corner blocks first.

The first course gets mortar underneath the block. This ends up being about 3/4". The shopvac was to clean any debris off the stemwall before applying the mortar. 

We use the level on top of every block. The tripod has a laser to make sure that every block is set at the same height. We can adjust the blocks on the first course due to the mortar joint underneath. After the first course, the blocks get a thinset which is a much thinner joint. This is why it is critical to get the first course right, any small error here gets magnified as we get higher.

Here are a couple of finished corners. 

Flexcrete Delivery

Well, we got our first two trucks of Flexcrete. 

This truck had 16 pallets on it, plus thinset. We unloaded down on the flat area you can see in the photo.

Here is the forklift we got to drive. It was ok, but the tractors are a lot funner.

It took about 45 minutes to unload the truck, but a couple of hours to get everything up the long driveway.

That is what it looks like with 32 pallets. 48 blocks per pallet = 1536 blocks. Each block is 8"x12"x24" and weighs about 54 pounds. Still more to come.

Plywood Floor

We have been very busy lately, which has made it hard to keep up with the blogging. We now have a plywood floor! This was a pretty fun job as we got to see a lot of progress as we went. Here are some photos.

Here we are in the beginning. We cut the boards to fit with a skilsaw, then applied glue to every joist. Once it is in place we screwed it down with approximately 32 screws per sheet. I'm guessing we used about 38 pounds of screws for the entire floor.

Here we are making sure the floor will come out flat and level. I am using a planer to take down a high joist. A couple of joists were low, we solved this by gluing a shim down before the plywood. Using the level and a string running from end to end you can get a very accurate measurement of anything that is high or low.

Here is a shot of the finished plywood floor. It came out great. Unfortunately we have had a lot of rain to deal with since this photo. Our original plan was to stain and seal the plywood and use it as our regular floor for awhile. We were not able to get a stain on in time, we have a sealer on it now. We will see how it goes, but by the time we get the walls up and the roof on, our floor will have taken a lot of abuse. It is possible we will still be able to finish it to look nice, but we might have to get a real floor sooner than we expected. 

Supply Lines

This is PEX tubing. We are using this for our plumbing supply lines. PEX is great stuff.

This is a sleeve for the PEX. One thing that is bad for PEX is UV rays so it must be shielded. Also, the blue designates it as a cold water supply line.

All those lines are connected to a manifold and go to sinks, showers, and toilets.

Under floor electric

We installed conduit along the stem wall under the Ledger. Underneath every outlet in the house is one of those boxes.

Here is the wire that we pulled through all the conduit.

This is a point where everything comes together or crosses. Our main panel will be where the grey conduit is sticking up. The white PVC is the sleeve for the propane line. The black ABS is a drain line. The black coil on the wall is our phone line. This area is all filled in now.