Forming the Foundation Footings

Now it is time to start building. We start with the foundations, of course. The foundations rest on spread footings. So today we cut back some excess packed rock and placed forms for the outside of the footings (visible in photo at left).Since we had temporarily removed the strings that delineated the outside of the walls, we restrung these (the batter boards have been left in place) to locate the outside edge of the footings. We used 2x10 boards, which are a bit shy of the 10” height of the footings, but will place crushed rock to fill the gap at the bottom.

Initially we thought that the increased height of the rock pad inside the footings would suffice as a concrete form, but the pad tapers unevenly at the edge, so we use 2x10s again. The picture shows the crew unloading the second batch of form lumber. We will complete the rock pad once the concrete has set and the forms stripped. We can re-use the form boards for window headers and parapet ribs.

As is standard practice, the form boards are screwed together at the (14!) corners. They are held in place with steel pegs and screwed to these pegs after we set the height of the form boards with a rotating laser. My task was to hold the laser receiver while Jake lifted the board to the correct height and Nicanor screwed the board to the peg in the right position. That made for an efficient and fast operation.

That was only a small help, but it allowed Eli to work with vendors to find the 10” Insulated Concrete Forms (ICF), which are not standard. They must be made to order and shipped from Omaha. I hope that doesn’t slow us down.

We were running electric power from the community barn today. Gus is supposed to come tomorrow to install an electric meter base. That will keep our extension cord from running across the road!

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