Construction is underway and a lot has happened so far on our 'Barn' project. I have a lot to catch you up on 🙂
If you want a recap of what the Barn project is, check out this post where I walk through the plans, and this post where I talk about the cost effective sustainable and healthy design features.
We broke ground in late July, and right now (early October) the second floor framing is about to start. I'll walk you through the construction phases we've gone through so far.
Fun Fact: I'm general contracting this project myself, something I've never done before (and will never do again unless someone pays me), so you'll see a few missteps due to my inexperience.
More...
July:
Clearing the lot:
Excavators are very impressive. My family and I painstakingly spent HOURS clearing almost our entire lot earlier this spring with a brush cutter and chainsaw thinking it would help speed up construction later.
But I learned too late that our efforts were completely pointless. All the brush grew back rather quickly. And then the excavator arrived on site in late July and cleared the entire lot in about 30 seconds.
Our lot is a giant sand box:
If you need beach sand, let me know. Our entire lot is like a giant sand box. There was not one rock to be found when the excavator dug the foundation. It made digging very easy.
Sandy soil is also reassuring when building a basement since it's such well-draining soil. We shouldn't have an issue with water in the basement. I took ample precautions for basement water protection regardless, which I'll talk about in just a bit.
Concrete is Poured:
It's a pretty exciting and terrifying step to see your foundation walls get poured. It meant I wasn't allowed to change my mind anymore. And it meant that we were finally on our way to building our home.
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to specify what type of concrete to use. I was hoping to use a lower embodied carbon concrete, but that proved to be very difficult to find in my area, and my time ran out.
Tip: Have a surveyor stake out the corners of your house even if you think the location and shape are pretty straightforward. I staked out the house myself before the excavator dug the hole, and apparently I staked it too far to the south. (Or the hole wasn't dug exactly where I staked it, I don't know for sure what happened. But the point is moot since the concrete is in.) I didn't realize how far to the south the house was until after the concrete walls were in.
August:
Foundation waterproofing and insulation:
Tuff n Dri Waterproofing
Warm n Dri Insulation and Drainage Mat
We used Tremco Tuff n Dri and Warm n Dri for the waterproofing and insulation combo on the foundation walls.
Waterproofing the foundation is critical to keeping a house dry and maintaining good air quality. A musty basement stinks (literally and figuratively.) That stinkiness will travel all through the house - the pour air quality doesn't just stay in the basement.
I like to use waterproofing on basement foundation walls. Building codes usually only require damproofing, which isn't as resistant to water as waterproofing is.
Once the waterproofing is applied, (it's the black stuff on the concrete walls in the image), the fiberglass board insulation goes over it. The cool thing about this system is that the fiberglass insulation also acts as a drainage mat. This means that any water in the soil that gets close to the foundation wall will travel into the drainage mat then get whisked down to the footing drain and removed from the area.
The fiberglass insulation also acts as a thermal insulator of course. I was limited in thickness to 2", but would have done more if I could. I'm not putting interior insulation in the basement, so that 2" insulation is all I have for the foundation. If this were our long-term home, I'd insulate the interior walls of the basement too, but since this is 'temporary' until we build the main house, the extra basement insulation won't be needed.
Fun Fact: You'll see in the pictures that the pink insulation doesn't come to the top of the foundation wall. We held it down 1' so that we could tape the sheathing to the foundation wall to create a continuous air barrier. (I'll talk about this more in a future post.) Once the tape is on, we'll go back and put insulation on the top part of the foundation wall.
Radon Pipe:
A passive radon system was installed under the slab. A 4" perforated pipe lays under the slab within the crushed stone and vents to a sealed vertical pipe that'll exit out the roof. The intent is that the stack effect pulls any radon in the soil through the vertical pipe rather than seeping into the basement from below the concrete.
Vapor Barrier:
All seams and penetrations are taped
The green pipe sticking up in the back is the radon system
A vapor barrier is required to go underneath the floor slab. The green plastic in the photo is our vapor barrier. A vapor barrier keeps the soil moisture out of your house.
We used the StegoHome 15 mil. vapor barrier. Most contractors will install a 6 mil poly plastic sheet under your floor slab. But 6 mils just isn't thick enough. It tears so easily that the barrier will be full of holes before the concrete is poured.
Specify a minimum of 10 mils for your under slab vapor barrier. I went with 15 mils because that's what the 475 Building Supply website carries. All seams need to be overlapped and taped, and the Stego needs to turn up at the wall and taped to the wall.
Basement Slab Is Poured and foundation is backfilled:
Nothing exciting to report here. Pretty standard concrete floor. The contractor did a beautiful job.
I'm hoping to explore a slabless 'slab' someday, but I'm still not sure how well that works in a basement situation, so we didn't pursue it for this project.
Underslab insulation: We opted out of doing underslab insulation for the same reason we didn't do a lot of foundation wall insulation. In the (hopefully) near future, this building will be a workshop with offices on the second floor. The workshop doesn't need much temperature control so we don't want to have overkill insulation on something that doesn't need it.
The house is ready to be framed!
September:
Framing Begins:
Things were moving along so smoothly, then the general contractor didn't order the lumber early enough. Who knew that it would take a week to have lumber delivered from the local yard? So there was a short lull before our carpenter was able to begin framing.
It also took a long time for the electrical company to hook up our temporary power, so we had to buy a generator to keep things moving along once the lumber arrived.
Sill Seal:
You can see the Finoc tape sticking out a bit below the 2x plate.
The mudsill is the greenish piece of wood directly above the concrete.
The pressure treated mud sill is the 2x plate that goes directly on top of the foundation wall. Except that it doesn't actually go directly on top of it. There is a sill seal material between the mud sill and the concrete, keeping air and water from creeping in below the mud sill.
We did the sill seal in two steps:
Step 1: Extoseal Finoc was laid down. This is a very sticky tape that adheres to the concrete and creates a capillary break. It's stretchy and butyl based.
Step 2: Contega HF adhesive was applied over the Finoc. Two strips of beads were applied and the mudsill was set onto the adhesive. The Contega creates a long-lasting gasket that will flex and move as the house dries and moves. It stays pliable for its whole life.
Floor Framing:
The first floor framing is intense. But it's there to support future vehicle weight when this building becomes a workshop.
We used regular 2x lumber for our floor framing. I love using floor and roof trusses in a lot of my projects, but for us we needed installation simplicity, and I didn't want to get a crane or a large crew involved to install trusses. We also didn't really need the cavity space that floor trusses provide since our plumbing is super simple and we don't have ducted heating/ cooling.
Our first floor framing is really beefy. We need the support for the future workshop to support vehicles. So we have doubled-up 2x12's spaced at only 12" on center for the framing over the area that will support the vehicle weight.
SubFloor Install:
We're using Huber Advantech for the floor sheathing. Pretty much all plywood and osb sheathing contains formaldehyde, so to completely avoid a formaldehyde product, you'd need to either use the soy-based plywood (which is VERY expensive) or do a solid wood floor sheathing (also pretty expensive and time consuming).
I prefer using the Advantech because it's a phenol formaldehyde vs the more typical urea formaldehyde. The phenol version is slightly less bad for you. Most interior grade sheathing uses urea based, which is the worst version. There is a premium cost to using Advantech, but I think it's worth it for indoor air quality and general durability and quality of material.
Subfloor adhesive: We used AFM Safecoat Almighty Adhesive. This stuff is awesome. It works so well, and it doesn't smell. It's a very safe product. (This is an affiliate link).
Wall Framing:
We're doing 2x6 studs at 24" on center (o.c.) Typical wall construction is 16" on center. We opted for 24" to squeeze a bit more insulation into the stud cavities.
We aren't doing exterior insulation on the house for the reasons I mentioned above (temporary housing), so we're doing a bit of an experiment to see how comfortable and energy efficient we'll be with just wood fiber cavity insulation in a 2x6 stud wall.
Zip Sheathing on the walls:
Zip sheathing is also made by Huber. It's the same Advantech sheathing but with a green weather barrier material applied to it. The weather barrier is normally a separate step and put on after the sheathing goes up. With the Zip system, you get your sheathing and weather barrier all at once.
The seams need to be taped to complete the weather barrier and air barrier. (The image above does not show all the seams taped yet.) I'll do a follow up post about air barriers at some point, so I won't get into it now. But a quick explanation is that a house needs to be super air tight - as air tight as you can make it. The Zip system makes it easier for contractors or DIYers to get a tight air barrier on their house.
October:
We got our street address:
It took the state months to provide us with our street address. We finally received it, and for some weird reason it made me feel really settled. Fingers crossed, this will be our last address change notification I ever need to send out 🙂
Final Thoughts
Phew, that was a lot (for me to write). Hopefully I learned my lesson to not wait so long to post updates on the build.
And hopefully you found this helpful! It's a new experience building my own home. It's exciting and nerve wracking 🙂
Follow me on Instagram for more real time updates on the construction progress.
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If you're building or doing a major renovation / addition:
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