ICF so far

So we left off last week (yeh, kinda of is a soap opera) with the ICF (Mike and Dustin) guys  finishing up just about all the work for the first pour of concrete.

It looked something like this -

The main living area will get a few more rows on top after this course is poured as the walls are about 18' tall but we can't comfortably do it in one pour.

The second bedroom is just about complete as this is as high as the walls get in this room.

Denali got a bad hair cut with a pair of horse clippers, he looks even more like a wolf now, a real scrawny one.

Here are a few shots of the tops of the walls where you can see the recycled plastic webs that provide the blocks with stability, able to tie them together and solid strength to hang things on the wall.

The horizontal rebar is in place and tomorrow the vertical rebar gets installed.

ICF as far as the eye can see.

This is the ICF wall heading toward the container wall and that big steel beam where they will tie in together.

This is what the inside of the ICF walls look like. The large, vertical struts are the supports that hold the ICF blocks in place and keep the walls plum. They also hold the little walkway that is very useful for working up top.

These little cut outs will be holding large bolts for attaching the rafter that will support the loft. They are cut out of the ICF so that the concrete will flow to the front and give extra support to the bolts. There will be a piece of plywood that will go over these holes and hold the bolts. Then when the concrete has set the plywood will come off.

These sand bags hold the supports in place. Normally the struts would be screwed to the sub-floor but in our case where the concrete is the final floor we had to use these huge boards and then laden them down with the sand bags.

So now the guys return tomorrow to finish off the last pieces of the ICF and Kyle will put the rest of the bolts into the walls. We are hoping for an inspection by the end of the week and then we can pour concrete next week!!

Kyle is currently glued to an infomercial that is all in Chinese - I think he is trying to learn Mandarin Chinese by following along with the sales girls as she hocks her cosmetic line.....these are some long days.