Tuesday 10 September 2019

We have a floor!

We prepped the floor (leveled and compacted soil, then put down vapour barrier, then dense rigid foam insulation, also chipped off some cement from the cement footers we had done years ago, because you don't want to have sharp 90 degree angles where cement touches cement since it needs something to grab onto), dug the greywater trench in the front hallway (which is 2 ft wide and something like 14" deep on the greywater input side, about 3 ft deep and 3 ft wide on the reservoir side (the water in the reservoir gets used as input for the toilet when it gets flushed), and it's all sloped so the greywater flows from the input side to the reservoir side by way of gravity. Then the professional cement crew came and framed the greywater trench, poured a first round of cement, made a rebar grid on the floor for the big pour, poured the cement for the big concrete slab, levelled it, and polished it off with some big fan blade looking thing, that a guy pushes across the floor when it's partially set. We waited almost a week to start moving in some of the lighter items.





Wednesday 4 September 2019

Cement floor about to be poured

We've leveled out the compacted sand/soil, then out down thick poly as a vapour barrier (taping the overlapping sheets of poly together using some blue tuck tape that is specific for vapour barrier and can get wet but still stays sticky), then put down on top of that a layer of dense rigid foam insulation from Greenstone Structural Solutions, a Canadian manufacturer that makes construction materials, with focus on green composite technology. The insulation is too dense for rodents to chew through, and higher R value than stuff on the market that is 3 times thicker (this stuff is 4 inches thick). On top of all that, there's a grid of rebar for structural support for the concrete that will be poured.
Back left pipe is for kitchen sink, middle right pipe is for toilet, front left pipe is for bathroom sink. Wrapped in the thin foil insulation a few times to give some protection/separation between the pipes and the concrete.


Concrete truck is here. Trying to keep out of their way.