The fall colors continue to amaze us. What a great place to work!
The bond beam form ready to pour (the Simpson straps have not been installed ).
Where the bond beam steps up in elevation.
The pier footers and rebar ready for sonotubes.
The clearstory windows in the great room. Rough-sawn lumber is assembled and set in place ready to complete the rest of the form work. This will be a lintel/bond beam. When the forms are removed the rough sawn lumber will be exposed and give this concrete detail the appearance of being a wood timber lintel.
This is the view through the clearstory window in the west guest bedroom. This window is 9' in width and 2'6" in height. It will be made up of three awning windows.
The 1st level bond beam is poured
The walls in the kitchen/dining area and the master bedroom reached full height in late September. The crew set up forms along the top of the wall to pour the bond beam. We put 2" of blueboard on the outside face of the form, and added rebar. We cut 3' lengths of 22 gauge Simpson strap material which were bent into a "U" shape and tacked to the top of the wall where the vigas will be positioned. Once the concrete is poured, the ends of the straps will protrude out the top of the bond beam and we will wrap them over the top of the vigas and nail them in place. A small piece of bithuthane will be placed between the viga and the concrete bond beam to isolate the wood from the concrete.
On October 3rd the concrete was pumped into the forms and another milestone in the project was reached.
The remaining walls continue upward
The walls in the great room and guest bedrooms continue upward to their final height. While the crew placed blocks, John and Griffin worked on the clearstory window details. With the clearstory window bucks in place, we can see the wonderful view they frame. The length of these openings is too large for a traditional wood lintel so we are creating a concrete lintel that has a fascia of rough sawn 2x material that will give the appearance of a solid wood lintel. John assembled the bottom and sides of the rough sawn material and lined it with bithuthane to minimize the moisture in the concrete contacting the wood which might cause it to warp. This was lifted into position and the balance of the 2nd phase bondbeam was tied into this. I trust the structural engineers (http://www.odiseanet.com/ ) calcs on this, but it looks scary. His design calls for 3 #5 rebar near the bottom of the bond beam, but we will add three more near the middle for my peace of mind. We will brace this detail very securely for the concrete pour.
Portal Piers
When the foundation was poured, the crew talked me into waiting to put in the piers for the portal posts. In hindsight, this was a mistake. Digging holes after power, drains, and other infrastructure have been buried is inviting disaster. Once the piles of blocks thinned out enough to get to the pier locations, I had the Jenkins back to excavate for these. We hit the phone line, main DWV drain and a roof drain in the process. It also required cutting away some of the blueboard at the base of the foundation and cutting french drains. A lesson learned...
The footers were poured on October 9th and the piers were poured the following day. I hope to get the holes backfilled Tuesday. Timbers, Vigas, and Corbels are on order and should arrive in about two weeks. It is raining today (Saturday) which makes it a good day to work in the shop on the canales.
