After the flurry of activity yesterday, everyone focused on their tasks so we can backfill tomorrow.
Our good friends from National Rentals arrive every Thursday morning. ‘Nuff said.
The Thursday morning ritual.
It was extremely busy today as we are preparing to backfill our excavation and getting ready for our final shoot of shotcrete on Thursday, April 30.
Our project site is extremely cramped due to the OSHA cuts that were excavated for the front and back concrete foundation retaining walls. Since these foundation walls are now to strength, we can backfill and compact the soil to fill the excavation. This will provide much-needed real estate at the front of the project site.
The decision yesterday to complete the feature concrete wall in the dining room required additional scaffolding and accelerating part of the schedule.
It is all good.
After the scaffolding arrived, Bill Brown’s team started forming the feature concrete wall in the dining room.
Forming the back of the feature concrete wall in our Dining Room.
Bryan met Bill Brown at the project site this morning to review progress. Bill assessed the remaining tasks and decided to complete the remaining shotcrete walls on Thursday, April 30.
We are using shotcrete for the interior walls in the house, including the 18 ft high feature wall in the atrium and kitchen. There are two walls under the garage, which will be formed on one side and shotcreted.
The interior concrete feature wall in the dining room was to be completed after the hollow core concrete panels were installed on the main floor. This would require all the shotcrete infrastructure (i.e., pumper truck, nozzleman, etc.) at that time.
Bill assessed the site and concluded that his team could form the concrete feature wall in the dining room on top of the concrete retaining wall and, using scaffolding, the Dees-Hennessey team could shotcrete this feature wall on April 30. Thus, all the shotcrete would be completed at one time.
Jorge ordered more scaffolding.
Bill Brown said it won’t leak.
Given there were a couple areas exposed where the white Grace Preprufe 160R could have weaknesses, Bill Brown consulted with the Grace technical resources to confirm what should be done.
Grace advised him to apply a bituthene coating over the seams and to any areas where the membrane appeared to be weakened. Also, they recommended that additional bituthene be applied around any penetrations of the membrane (e.g., utility conduits, plumbing, etc.).
After addressing the waterproofing, the insulation can be put up and then the Miradrain.
Black bituthene applied over the white Preprufe 160R at the south-east foundation retaining wall.
We arrived back from Roatan late last night as Houston Airport had experienced storms that delayed flights for two days.
Jo-Anne left from SFO to Brussels for meetings all week and Bryan went to the job site to review the progress made while we were gone.
The project site looked good as the forms were up for the feature concrete walls inside the house.
Forms are in place for the feature concrete wall by the atrium and kitchen.
We spent a fabulous week in Roatan, Honduras with our good friends Jim, Lynn and Brittany O’Brien. It was, of course, research for our remodel project although maintaining focus during this trip required significant discipline.
Our remodel project is to renovate the ground floor of our Eichler home and put a full new lower level (basement) under it. We are trying to be as ‘green’ as possible and are pursing LEED-H Platinum certification for the house. More than half of the floor in the house (ground floor and lower level) will be polished concrete.
Given it is spring break for our two children, we decided to take them to Roatan, Honduras for a week.
Map showing Honduras and the island of Roatan.
We stayed at Infinity Bay, which was only a few strokes away from spectacular diving on one of the best coral reefs in the world.
View from Infinity Bay over the reef.
We found some polished concrete that looked great. We’re wondering what this would look like if we had s stain (or dye) in the cement in the concrete.
Floor with polished concrete. Looks great!
Polished concrete, close up. What if the concrete had a colored dye or stain in it?
