Thinking Ahead When Building A Log Home

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.