“No rest for the wicked” they say, so Eric and I head into the log home build site again on Sunday for more basement prep work.

Today we’re finishing off laying the styrofoam, laying the 6″ square reinforcing wire, and burying the plumbing.

Sometime on Monday the Pex tube will be delivered that will provide in floor heating into our log home. Not knowing when it will arrive – and with the concrete trucks coming on Tuesday morning, we know we must be fully prepared and ready to install the semi-flexible tubing the moment it arrives.

It proves to be another scorching hot day, with blinding visual conditions worsened by a nearly white floor as well as the stark, bright white Logix walls. By this time, Ben Kyle has already been in and placed the last row of Logix blocks and ICF Building Solutions is well prepared for pour day.

We, however, have much work to do still.

For dinner on Sunday evening we popped over to Richard Musclow’s house and Eric had a chance to get direction and information from Richard (the area’s best heating guy – see Musclow Heating in Bancroft, Ontario) on the best way to lay the Pex tubing for maximum comfort within our finished home.

Richard talked with us for some time about how we would be ‘living’ in our home and armed with that knowledge he laid out a plan for our work on Monday.

The Pex in-floor tubing would be closer together along the frost wall as well as under my office desk. We also discussed the possibilities that this type of heating affords us in the future – should we want infloor heating on the upper floors or decide to expand in the future.

Partly because we live so far out of town and partly because we are anxious to have our log home built and ready to live in as quickly as possible, Eric decided to merge two day’s of pouring concrete into one day.

This means that the same day our ICF (Logix with Jason Hoover and team) walls are poured, so will be our basement floor.

Also, as we only have a few days left until “Pour Day”, this gives us very little time to get the infloor radiant heating tubes in place, in floor plumbing and drains installed, and load-bearing footings dug out and ready for the pumper truck.

In six hours of hot sun and blinding light conditions (the rays bouncing off the bright white Logix walls are intense), Eric and I set out to dig the inner footings and lay the styrofoam base. Our contact for sheet styrofoam saved us over $1,000 Canadian, but we had to truck it ourselves onto the building site.

One final pass of leveling off the gravel and we began by digging out the three 2′ and 3′ deep holes as well as the trenches that will hold the plumbing and support the load bearing wall.

The next step was to cut and fit the styroam sheets. And finally, laying the stainless steel, 6″ square, re-inforcing wire.

As you can see in the photo above, one hole is dug on the north side of our log home, and Eric is starting to think about the best placement for the styrofoam. The photo below is the south side of the house’s basement.

Ben Kyle of ICF Building Solutions still has one pass at the top of our foundation to complete – the basement walls will finish up at 8′ 4″.

Before we leave on Saturday afternoon, Eric also manages to create the plumbing layout (in floor) as described to him by Tony Bertucca. Tony is our area’s (Bancroft) best plumbing guy by many people’s admission and suggestion. Tony has been described as ‘gifted’ in his craft.

As Ben Kyle of ICF Building Solutions set to work building the foundation for our log home, all walls were braced from the outside (vertical posts in the photo below), and scaffolding braces and a walkway were created.

This was all in preparation for ‘pour day’ which everyone referenced with delight and anticipation. Pour Day is “where the rubber meets the road” so to speak and contractor, home owner, and every worker on the site can witness first hand how skilled the styrofoam installation expert really is.

Why It Is Important to Brace Your ICF Walls

Without braces there is no way to tell – 100% – if the walls will square up, pour level, or for that matter even hold up to the hundreds of pounds of concrete pumped into them on the big day.

We happened to notice another contractor in the Bancroft area working on a nearby site all week that did not have braces on the exterior ICF walls — and Eric and I both felt sorry for the person who would end up having to finish, frame, or even buy that house one day.

Why You Want to See Your Contractor Using Scaffolding

I may not have ‘all’ the reasons here in the argument ‘for’ scaffolding, but I do know on our job, it was a well-used ‘cat-walk’ come pour day.

Not only could our contractor (Jason Hoover of ICF Building Solutions) inspect every block laid, all use of rebar, and ensure the walls were square and level – others on the build also used the scaffold cat-walk.

Staff on the site during the pour could easily move from corner to corner and inspect the insertion of the concrete into the styrofoam’s core.

Our log home site photographer also moved around with ease and managed to film and shoot from every angle requested of her.

And finally, the pumper truck’s operator (whose name has eluded me at the moment) could easily get a bird’s eye view of everyone involved in the pour – and be within earshot of our requests to ’stop’, ‘move the arm’ and ‘let it rip’.

To work on a job like this without scaffolding and supports would not only be too much risk for error (in my humble opinion) but also make the job a lot more difficult. If you’ll be contracting this work out for your own log home build, be sure to call Jason or confirm with your contractor ahead of time that both scaffolding and exterior braces will be used.

Stay tuned for my upcoming post and photos about ‘pour day’.

Jason Hoover and Ben Kyle of ICF Building Solutions were eager to get building the walls of our new log home, but before they were to ‘close in the box’ that would be our basement, we first had to bring in some gravel for the basement sub-floor.

So on Wednesday – or was it Tuesday, the week is a blur – Eric, Ben, Veronica and I set out and managed to empty 8 pickup truck loads of gravel onto the site and level it.

You can see in the photo above, all there is to Logix blocks. Two sheets of styrofoam, held together by black plastic spacers, with lego block style tops and bases.

On another post I will talk more about building ‘green’ and other benefits of building the base structure of a log home with stryofoam – the beneifts of which there are many.

At any rate, once the gravel was in and we no longer needed ‘truck access’ into the basement, Ben got building the walls. He did this mainly on his own, but under the instruction and care of Jason Hoover via cell phone. As the homeowners we had perfect confidence in Ben Kyle – not only in his ability to do the job on his own, but to look after our pets on the days we couldn’t make it into the property.

Within a day’s time, our building site started to look like a house…

Here’s something else you want to see a fair shake of on your building site if you’re using strofoam blocks – rebar!