Pouring foundation walls

The foundation walls were poured this week, so the house is beginning to take shape. I had never appreciated how much work it is to prepare the walls for pouring. The walls themselves are large (likely 12' in some sections) and are heavily reinforced with re-bar. Thus, it took a crew a couple of weeks to build the walls and place the re-bar. Once everything was in place, the actual pouring of the walls took about 4 hours. Below are some photos and videos of the process and finished product.

Below is an overview picture of the foundation walls with a pump truck in action. The forms themselves are heavy metal.

Here is an inside picture of one of the walls with re-bar in full display. As you can imagine, placing the re-bar is a time-consuming task.

Below is a link to a video of the walls being poured.

Notice how tall the finished walls are in the basement. This picture is looking towards the unfinished basement storage room.

Finally, here is a video of the finished product.

The next steps are putting in the foundation drainage pipes, waterproofing the walls, and getting water and sewer feeds into the house.

Pouring footings

There was a lot of excitement yesterday on the house project. The cement trucks arrived to pour the footings for the foundation. The attached video provides a good overview of the process.

And here are some pictures of the work and the end result.

Next step is to pour the walls. The amount of cement involved is impressive. We're gaining a better appreciation of what it means to build a house.

Lastly, our neighbors reported that a bear was running around our hole in the ground a couple of days ago. Word is getting out that this is an interesting place. A more likely explanation--the workers left some food lying around and the bear was glad to finish it off.