Big house, little house

It's interesting to watch the new house rise up out of the ground and it will be great to move in when it is finished. The new house is certainly bigger than our current residence, but with the hole dug and the foundation exposed it looks particularly big. Interestingly though, the footprint of the new house is not that different than the house we demolished. In fact, the living space on the main floor of the new house is about 200 square feet less than the former house. Even counting the garage, the footprint of the new house is only about 200 square feet bigger than the footprint of the former house. The difference, of course is in the second floor, which is where the additional space is added.

Foundation poured

On Thursday or Friday, they poured the concrete for the foundation walls. They removed the forms on Friday.

Forming the basement

Last Thursday, they formed the basement.

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weeping tile and stone fill

Once the footings were poured, weeping tile was placed around the footings and a stone slinger deposited stone fill all around the footings in preparation for the concrete.

House Demolition

Thanks to our neighbour, we now have some pictures of the demolition.

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concrete footings poured

The footings for the house were poured yesterday. Today, they had hoped to install the weeping tile around the outside of the footings, spread stone around the footings and erect the forms for the basement walls. However, with all the rain today, things were delayed. As you can see from the photo, some of the plumbing has also been installed.

Engineered fill creates a firm base to build the house on

As I mentioned in my previous post, the soil under the old house was quite loose and full of organic material. From what I have been told by neighbours, this area used to have a stream or an underground stream running through the backyard and may also have been a floodplain for the Ottawa river long ago before the entire area was developed. That would certainly explain the large amount of organic material in the soil - it was almost like peat.

So, to ensure that the new house would not settle, the builder had to remove all of the organic soil until they reached undisturbed mineral soil - about 60 cm below the level of the bottom of the footings on the new house. Then, about 160 metric tonnes of engineered fill were dumped in the hole, spread and compacted to create a firm flat surface to build on.

Now the surface is ready to build on and the next step is to pour the concrete footings.