Forms, Foundation and Fun

Over the course of the last week, B&D Foundations came in, set up forms, poured concrete, and Basement Formspeeled the forms away. We have one deep basement- all in all it is almost 13' deep. Why so deep? You ask. Well, we can only go so high with the height of the house, as not to encroach on the bulk plane (the imaginary lines that the city requires us to stay within). We also want 9' ceilings on all of our floors. Well, what we discovered was, in order to stay under the bulk plane, the first floor had to be on grade (100'0"). That meant the floor joists were going to have to be below grade. They would have to be set into the basement walls. And if we wanted to have at least 8' ceilings in the basement, we were going to have to dig to the proverbial 'China'.

I have tried to draw this out as well as possible. This is not what you would call and 'architectural detail'. But you may get the gist.

So the basement guys brought in styrafoam inserts to create the ledge- this sat on top of the rebar at 19" below the top. On Thursday they were ready to pour the concrete. Five or six guys are on the top of this ledge pumping in concrete and vibrating the heck out of it. When they were almost complete, snow started to fall. No worries, that concrete was over 100˚ going in. The walls were then blanketed for the weekend.

When the forms came off Monday and Tuesday it was a thing of beauty. I know that it seems silly to think a basement is sexy, but this thing is sexy. Too bad we have to cover it up with dirt.

Next up: Waterproofing and drainage- exciting stuff