Recent content by BrerHair

Of course, we used fire-retardant shakes.

Didn't have cell phone cameras back then, so I didn't take that many photos, not like today. Guess I'll wrap this up with a few pics of the house, for overall context. Don't even have any pics of the completed home, not sure where those are. The guy I built it for still lives there, so I could...

You can see how far framing had progressed before backfilling was complete:

Speaking of cave-in, you just take the necessary precautions. We benched the overdig where the dirt appeared more loose, but there were parts of the dig in stable dirt where it looked like what it was: decayed rock, you could see the rock geometry in the dirt. Had no cave-ins. Waterproofing...

Well, at some point you just have to go and build it, right? Obviously you are referring to one of OSHA's Big Four, Cave-in. We had one minor injury on the job during 16 months' construction: a suspended ceiling subcontractor's scaffolding collapsed in 19' ceiling gym, he had overloaded it with...

We had some beam pockets in the walls for some rather large steel beams, one of them was something like a W36x211: Took a monster crane to set the steel beams:

Good question. Once concrete sets up with all that steel, those walls don't want to move. But still, we framed wood floor system before we backfilled walls, in order to support the tops of the walls. Here you see the floor plywood diaphram is installed before backfill and note that the plywood...

Just easier to pre-make all form panels the same size and screed off concrete below top of form. Easier=faster

Well we ended up spending about $108,000, didn't really save any money. It was a fun project. The walls turned out fine, the house was on the market about a year ago for about 5 Million, quite a house. Stripping forms: Had some cold joints as you can see here. We used some kind of spray-on...

How about for a 14,000 SF luxury home? 1999, the turn-key bids were coming in around $110,000 for the poured concrete foundation walls and my boss says to me: You can do this, can't you? I knew that I could, if I had enough labor. What if we use our eight man framing crew for labor? But would...

Don't know what you do for a living, but I'll bet it ain't construction. You are one cynical Garage Journaler. The market does dictate the standards in luxury homebuilding, I can assure you of that. To get back on topic, this is about keeping the freshly poured concrete wet during the 28 day...

Thanks Keith. This is what I want to know. I hang out at the HAMB quite a bit and while there are some engineer types over there, it's nothing like what it appears to be over here. Obviously have not spent much time "over here". Love to learn, though . . . this looks like a great place for...

Thanks. Guess what I'm asking is exactly what are you all doing that requires complicated milling or shaping. What are you tinkering with or building?

Yep, that's the same code we build to down here. That guy is your window guy, he knows his ****.