We're Out of Rebar Jokes
Seriously, there's only so many headlines I can come up with about rebar. So it's a good thing that this afternoon we had our city inspection of the installation for the slab rebar, and tomorrow morning, first thing, we have the engineering inspection which will include taking samples of the concrete that is getting poured tomorrow morning. You read me right, our first real concrete goes in tomorrow!
A new feature: foundation-cam! We set up a stop-motion camera and filmed some of the work today. With any luck, it will work while concrete is being poured tomorrow. For now, watch our contractors walk around and put in keyway.
This evening, after getting home from a meeting, we walked around on the mattress. It really is starting to feel like a room. More room than I really wanted to pay for, but a room, and thus nearer to finally being pile-free.
There's one wall in the basement space, a shear wall that cuts the smaller portion (under what used to be the back porch and is now the bathroom and laundry room) from the bigger portion (under the dining room and kitchen). It is not concrete; it's just a super-beefy wall with tie-downs to hold it to the slab.
One of the stupider discussions we had during the process (with our former collection of contractors, natch) was about whether we should include keyways in the bottoms of the walls (as opposed to having a straight joint held in place by just rebar). The argument being, I guess, that they take extra work to make. This is a keyway form sitting in place. Frankly, a bit of belt-and-suspenders is not un-called-for at this point.
As the floor gets taller, the water heater gets closer to being in the right place.
The strangest condition in the rebar is around the shoring: the rebar gets tighter together, and there are these diagonal pieces to make it firmer. You can really feel the difference when walking there: it feels solid rather than bouncy.
The dog is still distressed by the lack of access.
One of the things our structural engineer did to tie the "plugs" where the shoring is sitting to the main slab is have the contractors cut away part of the shoring and run some rebar straight through.
posted by ayse on 08/16/05