Building Retaining Walls

Once our float of boards and plywood arrived Eric and I got busy building a retaining wall for the south side of the house.

We built it, then lifted it into place. On the base you’ll see two small chunks of rebar sticking through from the concrete floor which we accounted for in the build and which helped keep the built wall in place during construction.

After we lifted the wall into place Eric tap-conned the end boards through the styrofoam and into the concrete - approximately 6 places on both sides, floor to ceiling.

The video below provides a 360 degree view of the wall, the beam, the header, the in floor Pex tubing, and the remaining space. When Freymond Lumber dropped off the steel beam for us, they thankfully laid it in place across the wall structure - the beam weighs over 400 pounds and as you can see would be incredibly awkward for any two strong people to move without mechanical assistance.

The next day, Eric and I built the smaller retaining wall for the cold room. This room sits directly below our foyer and is without infloor heating. Even though it will still remain warm — given the styrofoam, concrete and surrounding rooms — it will be somewhat cooler than the rest of the house.

We will be building shelves within and enclosing the wall in the future.

Below is a short video of Eric lifting the smaller retaining wall into place.

In the next post - far more exciting - we’ll go through the many steps to building the first floor - from the joists to the sub-floor. After that, we’ll start adding logs and getting this house built!