Installation of steel beams

After taking a year off, I was chomping at the bit to get started on the house again. My plan this year was to put the floor in and to get rid of the piles of dirt I had.  My brother Ian and myself put on the sill plates and made sure that it was all level, some places needed to be shimmed. A trick that a framer friend of mine told me about, when they are finishing of ICF basements, they attach the electronic level while leveling off the top,saves a lot of time later. It would of saved some time. Lessons learned.
With that done I went ahead and ordered my steel beams and all the floor material (joists and 3/4 inch tongue and groove plywood).  The steel beams were delivered without any problems, right where I asked  to have them dropped.  It was a different story for my floor joists and rim joists. I asked to have them dropped  on my driveway, but where they dropped them was a different story. I was at work, checking  my emails and saw that I had received one from my neighbor Keith. He informed me that my flooring material had been delivered but was not dropped where I wanted it. I replied and asked him if it was close to my driveway. His response was that it was closer to my neighbor's driveway and down a 20 ft embankment.  I went up the next day to check it out and I could not believe where it had been dropped off!  There couldn't have been a worse spot.  I would be making a phone call to the supplier, I was reimbursed   for what it would take a crew to remove it from the embankment to my driveway.
When I got my plans drawn up I questioned the steel beams instead of wood beams. His answer was that steel beams are not as big and they won't be that heavy. His father and himself moved a steel beam into his basement without too much problem. Well, when the steel beams were sitting in the ditch at the top of the driveway, I tried moving them by hand, I emphasize tried,  I couldn't believe how heavy the
beams were, there was no way I was going to move them by hand.  I had to hire a Zoom Boom to move them closer to the house and hopefully use it to lift them into place. Zack, Chris ( my framer friend) and I went up for the day to start and hopefully put all the beams into place. That plan was short lived because the Zoom Boom didn't perform as I had hoped. (not the right piece of equipment!) While putting the first beam in position, Zack pinched his finger badly.  Lots of pain and blood, that day was finished.  I was willing to hire a crane to come and place the steel beams into place.  Chris was adamant that we didn't need a crane, he said we do this all the time, all we need is manpower. They didn't have cranes when they built the pyramids. I was very skeptical because of all the trouble we had with the first beam and that was one of the smallest, they would get bigger as we went along.  So the day of reckoning was here, a small army (11) would go up and throw the beams into place.There was a communication mishap as the plan was to start around 1030 am, when in actual fact everyone was meeting at 1030 a.m. and carpooling up to the  lot. So my car load of 5 headed up at 9am to be ready to start at 1030.  By the time everyone arrived we already had 2 beams in and were making plans for the last beam, which was the heaviest and was going to be the trickiest.

Working smart not hard

When they arrived, they had brought some scaffold which made the job a lot easier as we wouldn't be working off step ladders.                                            

The Calvary arrives

If they didn't arrive when they did we would have had to wait until they did because I couldn't see us moving it let alone lifting it into place.  I still had my doubts about getting this beam into place, not only was the beam heavy, it had a tongue at each end that had to fit into brackets so we could bolt them together.  Well with a lot strength, grunts and groans and of coarse a well defined plan we got the last beam into place and the 2  jack posts attached and tightened, finished. I couldn't believe the job was done, I really didn't think we would do it and it only took a few hours.

Many hands make light work

Fine tuning the beams

What a difference a few hands make- Armstrong power

Summer of 2011

We decided that the summer of 2011 we would take a break from building and enjoy the property.  Last year was so busy we really didn't do much of what we really enjoy (hiking, canoeing, and just relaxing). So this year we will be. I told a non-truth.  I will be doing some some building this year, a dock for my morning coffees.

Many a morning coffee will be consumed here

Putting the Footings to bed

 Winter was coming and I needed to protect the footings.  Back-filling will protect the outer footings but I needed a way to protect the footings on the inside of the basement.  One way is, and quite common on construction sites is the use of straw. That was the way I was heading until I mentioned it to the guy that was back-filling the basement. He suggested to avoid straw at all costs, it would work but it would be hard to deal with after the fact, it gets soggy and stinks.  He suggested  11/2-2 inch Styrofoam insulation 4 ft out from the

The Mike Holmes pose

 wall all around the footings.When the snow accumulates in the basement  it would also act as more insulation. This would be better than straw with no clean up and you keep the insulation there when you pour you basement floor to make a warmer floor.

Now that I have put the footings to bed for the winter, it is now time to sit  and look back at all the hard work done this year and wait until next summer. I might take a break next year from building and just relax but we will see.

John having a good time

A well desired break

Pouring the Basement

Setting up power for the vibrator

Pump truck getting set up

 Here it is, the day I have been working towards. All the hard work that has been done is finally coming to a close.  It is the middle of September and the weather is great. A pump truck and 3 cement trucks had  been ordered, and were on their way. There will be 4 people here today, 2 friends ( Marty and Tim) my son Zack and myself. Lisa and my parents will also be here but they will be in the cheering section. I will  be pouring the cement and Marty and Tim will be running the vibrator and Zack will fill in where needed. The vibrator is used to prevent any large air pockets making  a honeycomb effect in the walls causing the walls to be weak. The walls are 9 ft high and I wanted to fill the walls 2 ft at a time. I started at the furthest wall away from the pump truck( making sure the arm of the pump truck would reach that far). I would  work my way around the basement trying to maintain a 2 ft pour which was not an easy task.  Marty and Tim followed me with the vibrator.  The pour took between 5-6 hours with a lunch break and was pretty much uneventful except for 1 near miss.  We almost had a blow out but it was caught before anything happened.  I was able to brace the section of the wall on both sides.  As the pump operator signaled to me that he had run out of cement and no more trucks were coming, I was about 6 ft short of finishing off the wall.  Luckily one the trucks had spilled a large amount on the driveway so we able to grab buckets and finish the wall off using that.

Pouring cement into the walls

Marty working hard with the vibrator as Tim supervises

Me pouring  and the guys following with the vibrator

To finish off the day Zack and myself went around and confirmed the walls were straight. Only minor adjustments had to be made,  using  the braces. Waited a few days for the cement to set up before I started taking down the braces and moving them to the top of the driveway awaiting pickup, that was a big job.

Starting the basement

I had mentioned in previous blogs that my basement was going to be an ICF basement (Insulated Cement Forms).  I choose to use the Nudura product. I will give you a little background information on this before I explain the installation process.  Nudura Insulated Cement Forms consist of two lightweight 2 5/8-inch thick expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam panels. These EPS panels are connected with high-density polypropylene hinged web/fastening strips every eight inches.  The Nudura wall system completes 6 building steps with one product providing:

1. The concrete form system
2. Wall structure (structural reinforced concrete)
3. Insulation
4. Air barrier
5. Vapour barrier
6. Interior and exterior finish anchorage

Having six wall elements in one product eliminates building steps and allows the building project to be completed faster and more efficiently.  Nudura has the longest forms in the industry, while most systems feature forms at 4 feet in length, Nudura forms are 8 feet long and 18 inches high.  Another feature I really liked was that each form and corner form are fully reversible, having no left and right corners to have to worry about dealing with during construction is nice (mistakes and miss counts do happen, especially with me).

Setting up the layout

My walls are the 6 inch form which means that I will have 2 5/8 foam, 6 inches of cement then another 2 5/8 of foam giving me a R value of approx. 23. That is a a very quick summary of Nudura ICF. There is a lot more information and forms to suit any style of building. This information I have stated relates mainly to the application of my basement.

Now that I have the layout marked on the footings, I can start installing the Nudura forms. One thing I must stress it to make sure you stage all the material in the inside perimeter of the footings. I started in one corner and worked in a clockwise directions placing corner forms first. Now with all the corners in place I started placing the 8 foot standard forms from the corners working towards the centre of that wall. The last piece of standard form needed to be cut to finish off the wall, no tape measures are really  needed at this point. Place the form over the open space and mark the spot and cut it with a big exacto knife. On the form there are cutting groves every 2 inches and an imprint every 8 inches marking the support webs. I marked the piece that I had to cut so I would know what to cut on the third course. The measurement looked like this 4w2g which stood for 4 webs 2 grooves. The 1st,3rd, and 5th courses would be the same layout and the 2nd.4th, and 6th are the same. After the first course was done I had to put horizontal rebar in the forms. This is an easy process as the plastic webs have a slot to put the rebar. Referring back to my installation manual, it states that the forces from the ground(backfill) would be on the inside of the wall so the rebar had to be placed on the slots on the inside of the basement wall.  If I build the entire house from Nudura, any floor above grade,  forces would be on the outside of the wall meaning that the rebar would have to be placed in the slots on the outside.

Placement of rebar

Support set up

Placing vertical rebar

On the 2nd course I would put the horizontal piece of rebar in the outer slot and 3rd course back to the inner slot.  This creates a nice little channel so when its time to place vertical rebar, it's kept in place. All the specs for rebar placement and diameter of rebar can be found in the installation manual.  All charts are engineered and have an engineers stamp, the building inspector might want to see this information. After the second course is done and all the horizontal rebar is in place, form lock has to be installed.  This adds support and straightens the forms. Now before I go any further I have to make sure everything is level, a little work now, prevents a lot of work later on.  Using an electronic level makes this step go quickly. I had to shim some spots but overall I was pretty level.  Before I started the 3rd course I had to attach the forms to the cement footings and this is  done by spraying foam from a can to the join where the Nudura form meets the cement.  I was really surprised how sturdy everything was once the foam dried which didn't take long.  After the third course, supports(braces) needed to be placed in position for 2 reasons. First for support  when the cement is poured into the forms and second, the supports (braces) act as scaffolds. After the third course the wall is 54 inches high and I will be going 6 courses high for a total height of 9 ft.  As seen in the picture the supports are placed 5-6 feet apart. Brackets are attached onto the supports to hold boards. When all is said and done you are able to walk all around the inside of the basement like scaffold. The last few courses went up pretty quick as all  the set up, measurements and leveling had been done.  Now with the walls complete all that needs to be done is to the placement of  vertical rebar. Since the front of the house was going to have a good amount of back-fill against the walls, I had to use 15M (5/8) rebar spaced every 400mm (16 inches).  The rest of the house I could have gotten away with 10M (1/2) rebar but like I stated early, I can't do this again and I like to over build than under build.

Fighting with the rebar

Finally, we completed everything that needed to be done. The salesman for Nudura said that he would come and do a pre-pour inspection with me to make sure everything was in place. He suggested a few areas around the windows that needed extra braces.  Once that was done I was ready for the building inspector to come and inspect the basement.  His only concern was that there were no stirrups( a type of rebar reinforcement) over the windows. I informed him that any window 5 feet and under was not required to have stirrups. All this information is found in the Nudura manual. The inspector signed off on the basement and now it is on to the next step.  POURING THE BASEMENT.

House Footings

Ready to start Footings

Entering new territory, it's time to start working on the house footings. For people that don't know what a footing is, it's what the house sits on and it transfers the weight of the house to ground. Mine were going to be 2 ft wide and 11.5 inches thick. My plans called for 8 inch thick footings but I decided to go with extra  because I won't be doing it again. The main reason was the a 2x8 piece of lumber would only give me 7.5 inches. I like the phrase "Go big or go home" so I used 2x12's which would give me 11.5 inches. After the footings have been poured, I could re-use the 2x12's for something else (decks, docks etc...). I paid a little extra to have pressure treated wood instead of ordinary lumber.
It pays to get a good operator to dig the basement, as the end result was very even ground. This made it easy to level the forms. A friend of mine who is a contractor gave me a hand to form the footings.  Since the footings have to be on undisturbed soil, it was necessary to do step footings in some areas.  It only took 2 days to finish and level the forms.  I had use of an electronic transit to make sure everything was level and that made things much easier!

Setting Forms for footings

Footings over Canadian Shield

Next step was to call the building inspector to come out and inspect the footings. I remember when the inspector showed up, he got out of his car with a big stick. I said to him "you will not need that, I'm a nice guy". He said it wasn't for me but to check how hard the ground was and to see how far he could push it  into the ground. Knowing how hard the ground was, I said to him if it would go into the ground more than an inch I would give him 5 bucks (I know, big spender!). He walked around the footings, poking around and needless to say I didn't have to pay any money. The inspector signed off on the footing and I was okay to proceed.
Since I was using 2X12's, the weight of the cement was a concern. Extra supports would be necessary to ensure we did not blow out the forms. I decided to fill the centre of the basement with stone and then support the outside of the footings. The only way to get the stone where I wanted it, was to hire a stone slinger.  If you haven't seen a stone slinger in action, it's something to see.  Now with the stone in place and the outside of the footings braced it was time to order the cement.  Since access to the footings from the driveway was going to a problem, I would have to order a truck with a conveyer on it. The conveyer would reach to the middle of the basement then we would need to wheelbarrow the cement into the forms.  I had calculated how much cement I needed (the cement company has the formula on their web site) but wanted to confirm it with them first. I gave them all the measurements and they calculated what I needed and I was right on.

Waiting for the cement trucks

 The day had arrived to pour the footings. The trucks were on route, family and friends on their way, the weather was overcast and rain was forecast-ed for early afternoon. I had a fire going and a tarp set in case the rain came early.  With 3 wheel barrels going and 2 trucks arriving at the same time, it took no time moving all the cement into place. We made sure that the rebar was in place as we all started at different corners to smooth out the cement. Marty, Bill and myself were moving along pretty well, we were just about finished when we looked at the corner my brother had been working on. We noticed that he was a bit further behind but his cement was as smooth as silk. Just as we were finishing up the rain came and it came down hard making his smooth silky cement look no different than ours,which gave us all a little chuckle.  Lunch arrived (this is where my wife comes in) just as we were putting the anchors in the cement.  The anchor would attach the basement walls (Nudura) to the footings.  We ate lunch cold and wet. When lunch was done, clean-up was quick and my help headed home. I felt pretty good, the job went without a hitch!

Eating Lunch

I waited a few days for the cement to set up, then proceeded to remove the forms. They came off much easier than expected.  Now comes the big job, ordering all the Nudura material for the basement. My next blog will explain what Nudura is, what it's benefits are and how you install it.

Money flying out of the account

 2010 was going to be an exciting year, now that the lot had been cleared, we could start building the house. We had the winter to investigate and gather information on basement types (poured, block, insulated cement forming etc...) I really enjoy that. You can never have too much information.  There were two things I was not involved in when I built the house I am in now, the footings and the building of the basement.  I was determined to do this as I wanted be a part in each phase of building my house.  ICF (Insulated Cement Forming) was the only one I could do by myself and in my mind the most energy efficient.  There are a few companies that manufacture ICF but with a lot of research and talking with contractors that have worked with ICF, I decided to go with Nudura.  I will get into that further in following blogs.  Now with the basement decided upon, I approached  a friend that was able to draw up plans for me. I gave him all the information that Lisa and I had decided upon and he performed his magic. A few weeks later after countless phone calls and emails, the plans were ready to be picked up.  Only a few minor changes had to be made.  Spring was on the horizon and I wanted to start digging in early May. Many people are afraid to deal with the town offices for some reason? They are a wealth of information that make your building experience a  more enjoyable one.  I asked what was needed to build a house on flood plain in Bracebridge and what costs I could expect. "Sorry I asked!!"  Here is where the money started flying out of my account.  911 sign-$22.65, driveway permit-$350.00 (and I already had a driveway), flood plain survey-$1400, lot survey with house location-$1076.25, building permit (involved a few things), house plans-$600, heat loss calculations-$500, septic permit-$300, the building permit itself came to $2256 ( total calculation of sq.ft and value). The big shocker was the lot levy ( there are many other names for this). I had to pay the Town of Bracebridge and the District of Muskoka the grand total of $ 7,725, ouch!!  Before I even put a shovel into the ground I had spent $12,229.90

Working on the driveway

Removing Oak stump

.  It's always a good idea to get a few quotes for anything that you aren't going to do yourself. I had 2 contractors give prices to dig my basement and do some work on the driveway. It was nice that the contractor I chose had previously done some work at my parents cottage, and had done a good job.I still wanted to be sure he was in the ball park, and he was.

Keeping it level

Time to start digging the basement, and digging in the Canadian Shield is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get. All we were hoping for, was enough room so we could could put our laundry room and our utilities down in the basement and if we got more room that would be a bonus.  We did hit some bedrock but we were able to dig and brake it up.  We lucked out and we ended up with a  full basement in depth and in area.  It took 3.5 days and $5,500 later I was ready to start the footings. Approximately $18,000 spent so far and I haven't bought any house material.

CLEARING THE LAND

Before the clearing started

2009......Was the year for clearing the land. We started mid-summer because any earlier the bugs would have eaten us alive. Trust me, we tried a few times but with all the under brush the mosquitoes were crazy and the whining was tremendous (not from me either) .This was a big job as we had a lot of trees to cut down. Luckily I love the chain saw so it wasn't work for me. We decided on a location for the house keeping in mind the set backs (distance from property lines & river). We had a beautiful large oak tree right where the house would be. We brought in an Arborist  to look at the Oak,  along with other large trees close to the location of the house. Right away he said the Oak had to come down for a few reasons. He felt it was approximately 100-150 years old with a few areas of concern. The main issue being the tree coming down during a bad storm. He gave us a quote to clear the under brush and cut down the Oak and other trees. I had no intention of hiring someone to do that work but the boss found this Arborist at the Cottage show and had to have him. She was afraid we would cut down the wrong trees . His initial visit was cheap, only $50 and he was there for a few hours.  There is a phrase I live by and you will here me say it many times through out my blogs "HAPPY WIFE HAPPY LIFE".

Base of Oak was 4ft across

 I have cut down many trees over the years and was very comfortable working with a chainsaw but I was concerned about this one. A good friend of mine on the department said he would come and give me a hand. The day started of well, we had a plan and it seemed it was going to be quite easy. He started his way up the tree with spurs on and around 10 feet up the tree he slipped and fell to the ground. Needless to say no cutting down trees that day, we spent most of the day at the Bracebridge hospital. I now needed to make the dreaded call home to say we were at the hospital, after many warnings to be careful etc...I felt bad that he had come all this way to help me and ended up with a separated shoulder. This also resulted in time away from work!

Timber

I was still determined to cut down that Oak , so with help from another friend also a firefighter we set off to cut it down.  Changing the method of attack, there would be no climbing this time. Fortunately, the tree was  in the middle of the property with no structures to worry about when it came down.  It took some work and the better part of a day, but we got it down without much damage to other trees. I must say when a  tree of that size comes down, it hits the ground and feels like an earthquake. Once it was down I took a closer look. It had been hit by lightning and had a lot damaged branches.  This was too nice of a tree to cut up for firewood, so we decided to have it milled into planks to later use for hardwood flooring in the house.

Taken a break

Where the house is going to be

With all the trees that had been cut down, there was a mountain of branches to be dealt with.  We tried burning small piles at a time but that turned into a slow and smokey process. The decision was made to rent a wood chipper and attack the pile that way. By this time it was Thanksgiving 2009 and my family was going to be at the cottage for the holiday weekend.  Saturday was the day to rent the chipper, which meant being in town early in order to get back to the lot to meet Lisa and the kids.  I was at the lot by 8 a.m. and it was magical. The sun was coming up over the trees and a mist was coming off the water. With our kids back for the weekend from college, plenty of  sunshine and lots of laughs, chipping the wood, clearing the land, this was a day to remember. As my Mum would say it was a "Golden Day.

Early morning mist

Ready for Milling

Milling the logs

                                                                                                                                                                                                                        It was now getting near the end of October and I wanted to get all the Oak milled and stacked before the snow started to fly. I found a local (Muskoka) guy with a portable mill.  He met me at the lot to see what needed to be cut. It was decided that he would come first with his tractor to put all the logs into a pile. 
Then he'd come back to cut the logs into planks. On the day we arranged to mill the logs, I arrived at the lot at 9 a.m and he was already there. The machine was set up and ready to go. We decided to go with rough cuts of 1 inch thick and 2 widths, 5 and 7 inches. I wanted some
squared beams cut to use for mantels so we cut 3 different sizes.  Man were they heavy!  We had to move them from the machine to a  location where they would sit for a few years to season. There were 3 of us, the owner of the machine 55yrs old, his helper 67 yrs old and me 46 yrs old. The first piece was 13ft long 12 in x12 in and the heaviest thing I have ever lifted. He told me that piece would be half the weight when it dried. I told him that's good because I didn't want Lisa to hurt her back when she moved it.We worked on it all day and finished the last few pieces in the dark using his truck headlights. I should have enough wood for about 1000 sq. ft.  I really enjoyed this experience and felt good that this nice old Oak was going to be part of my house to be enjoyed for many years to come.

Finished planks

 So 2009 comes to a close with big plans for 2010................

Time Line

Checking out the property

Before I get into all the hidden costs as stated at the end of my last post, I would like to give a little time line from the past to the present. My parents have owned a cottage on the Muskoka River for the past 30 years. So knowing the area very well and hoping to retire here, we were keeping an eye open for land for sale. A few came up which we checked out and by the time we seriously looked into them, they were sold. Then on the Thanksgiving weekend in 2008, we were on a long walk, which is one of our favorite pass times, we saw a piece of land for sale ( The realtor was just putting up the sign). We walked the lot a few times and fell in love with it. The lot already had a driveway down onto the property with lots of nice trees, good water frontage, and it was high and dry. We had a friend who was a Realtor so we asked him if was interested in working for us, which he did. We made our offer and with a few counter offers and conditions the offer was accepted with a closing date of December 19th, 2008. Finally on November 6, 2008 we signed off on the condition of the offer and now all we had to do was wait for the closing day (Dec. 19th).

I'm standing in front of our lot and
 No, that's not Santa Clause. 

On the day of closing we decided to go to the lot so we asked a good friend  to join us for this special day.(this is the same friend who came up with the name "River Retreat") We headed up in the morning and we drove into a bad winter storm. Our lot is not located on a year round road, and the driveway is 200 metres from it. We started out  walking  to the lot while our friend stayed in the vehicle to attend to her new born baby. As we trudged through the deep snow, the cell phone rang and it was our lawyer calling to inform us that the deal just closed and the property was ours.

Winter Wonderland

My wife and I have gone to my parents cottage for New Years for as long as I can remember so while we were up, we walked up to the lot to see how it looked in the winter. It was magical, I can still remember walking (snowshoeing) around the lot and standing by the river and saying to my wife " I can't believe this is ours"

The year of 2009........

In the Beginning...

RIVER RETREAT......This is a project I started in May 2010, where my wife and I started on our dream home on the Muskoka River.

I built the house I am currently living in. I always said I would build one more home and that would be my place of retirement . My first attempt was a practical house, relatively plain. I was young with a wife and three young children. I am not a builder by trade, my profession is a full-time Firefighter of 25 years. Well retirement is getting closer (5 more years) and we hope to have the house done for that special day.
Through this forum we would like to share our journey with you, as we proceed with the building of our dream home. We are sure to experience not only the joys and excitement of this project but also a few challenges and frustrations along the way.

Finding a design for the house was not much of a problem as we both had a good idea of what we wanted. The only problem we had was agreeing on the size. I wanted around 1200 sq. ft and the boss (my wife) wanted much more. Her reasoning was the kids and later grand kids that would inevitably come for visits. I explained (nicely of coarse) that for 90% of the time it would be only us. With some bribes and promises of bunkies and such we came to a compromise. The house will be 1650 sq. ft with a three season room of 200 sq. ft. and a basement that we could and will finish.

My next blog, I will start with all the things needed to get started in the building process and the costs associated with it. It will be an eye opener for the first timers.