Rim Boards Complete
As hoped, the rim boards started to progress more quickly once I had the right drill bit.
Friday saw the west wall and jog at NW corner complete before I stopped to pick my cat – Blackberry – up from the vet after dental surgery (two teeth were removed as he had broken them off in a fight with something – another cat or something bigger – almost two years ago). We then started two days of tense babysitting as Blackberry really does not want to be a full time indoor cat. Even on Friday when he was still tipsie from the anaesthesia, he was still trying to rip through the now screwed shut inner cat flap.
My wife and I got very little sleep Friday night as he continued to cry well into the night and then again early in the morning. Other than a couple of quick get-away’s on Saturday, I spent the day trying to calm him and ensure he did not rip the place apart trying to get out. This started with telling the vet in the morning that the soft collar was coming off as blackberry was just getting it caught on everything. Saturday night was marginally better than Friday, but by Sunday AM, we were all frazzled and gave up trying to keep him in (originally he was supposed to be in till Monday or Tuesday). This meant no more pain meds so that he was lucid when outside. This was a risk because if he was in too much pain, he would not eat. Fortunately we got away with it and peace was restored in the land. Monday AM follow up vet visit showed all was A-OK, and although he still needed to finish his antibiotics and stay on soft food for several more days, the rest of his routine (and MINE!) could get back to normal.
The rest of Monday saw rim boards mounted on the south and east walls of the house. On Tuesday I attacked the last of the form work on the garage west wall and removed it as well as the pipe penetrations in this wall. Some of these I had not tapped soon enough after pour and they were well and securely fixed into place. SO I just cut them out lengthwise with the recip saw and will drive in new pipes later. The day finished off with cut and mounted rim boards on each side of the stair well on the north wall. Before I could fully drill and insert all of the anchor bolts, my hammer drill giving up the ghost. Fortunately a disassemble last night showed two contacts had come loose from the circuit board. A quick solder job and we were back in business.
Today saw the last rim board on the garage west wall mounted into place. As this was on the outboard side of the wall from where the scaffold was, and the board was over 22′ long, I needed to figure out how I was going to get it in place myself. I installed two cleats that would capture the board as I lowered it over the edge and then tied a rope to the south side to aid in lowering it down. The north side was supported with the scaffold. In 5 minutes the excitement was over and the board was in place with two anchors securing it.
I spent the rest of the day blowing all of the debris off all of the scaffold and foundations before starting the clean out the footing bags and refasten to the ICF in preparation to the final pit gravel. I realize now that it was a mistake to loosen the footing bags (I did so to drain the water that was accumulated in them). It took several hours to blow the debris out of the inboard side of the footing bags so that I could re-staple to the ICF wall. If you are going to drain them, then attach them back to the wall right away after.
Tomorrow I will patch all of the holes on the bag footing. I was very careful, but there are still a lot of cuts and holes that need to be sealed. Especially on the north wall where I was jack hammering the concrete in the blowout above. I did not expect these chunks of concrete to create so much damage when they fell (pieces were all smaller than 2″ in diameter), but they sliced it up pretty good and I will just put a continuous peel and stick membrane on this section to seal it up again. I will then need to rake the gravel to the right levels against the foundation (the outboard 4ft around the perimeter will have 4″ of rigid foam where the rest of the floor field will only have 2″) and then prepare for some more gravel to be slung into the pit. This will be the last step before actually starting to frame the basement.
Before going, I wanted to acknowledge all the wonderful readers, around the world, that regularly visit the site. I am up to 8600 unique visitors for a total of 21,600 visits to this site (my blog is now at a whopping 27,600 unique visitors!) since I launched it just a little over a year ago. The readers are from all over the world with my top 25 countries per lsit below. I would like to make special mention and thank Håkan and Carita in Sweden (my wife’s relatives), for their continued interest. I would love to get a lot more comments from all of you visitors out there.
Top 25 Countries of visitors
Finally, a shout out to Ed in Winnipeg. I understand you may be enticed to come out in a few weeks to go with Ron and Gail on a trip. It sure would be good to see you again.
Many thanks to all for visiting!
“If it doesn’t challenge you, it doesn’t change you.” —Fred DeVito
“An ounce of practice is generally worth more than a ton of theory.” —Ernst F. Schumacher (1911-1977) Economist