So it's been raining for about a week and finally this past Friday it stopped long enough for the crew to get out and do some work. They poured another 3 feet and then assembled more blocks. I'm thinking they should have the foundation complete early next week.
The visit to the land this afternoon showed us that the IFC foam block started going up. The crew set two rows and placed some rebar in the forms, but haven't poured any cement yet. You see the wife in standing in a gap in the wall? That'll be where the walk out basement doors will be. You can also see that the trees are slowly turning green too.
Here's a close up of the IFC blocks from the top down and you can see how thick the foam is. At the end of the day, it's supposed to give a R-41 insulation value... or something close to that. That'll be important since my office will eventually go down there.
Yesterday we went up to check things out and water our dying plants. The crew was there pouring and packing gravel into the foundation floor. You can see in the big version of the photo they installed PVC pipe on the inside perimeter for drainage and are covering it with the stone. This was Wednesday and they said they'd were shooting to have the foundation complete by Friday. That seems like a lot of work. We'll see. I'm anxious to see the walls up as we'll then know where our windows will be.
Now that the footers are in, work has started on the foundation proper. We're using insulating concert forms (ICF). Traditionally plywood forms were used then torn away to leave the foundation walls. With ICF foundations, the forms are made of thick rigid foam blocks which remain up for extra insulation.
I went up to the site today and actually ran into Dave, our foundation guy, as they were wrapping up work for the day. They poured the footers and are going to placing the foam block forms for the foundation walls this coming week. He guesstimated that the foundation should be complete by next Friday (May 16th).
You can see the four squares in the center for the lolly columns, the lame metal columns that support the house in the basement. I told Dave that it sucked we needed so many columns since sometime in the future we'd like to have a family room down there. He said he was going to talk to the engineer about installing a steel I-beam so we can minimize the number of columns. Dave is a good guy.
It's a bizarre concept for most, but why not build home in a factory? Everything is built in a jig so every angle is perfectly square. The factory workers are assigned a single job which they do all the time so they get pretty damn good at it. All the wood is stored inside unlike a traditional work site where everything is exposed to the elements. Work is done from 9-5 rain or shine so a home can be built in a week, unlike months and months it takes with a traditional on site job. Sounds good to me.
We ended up going with Ritz Craft to build our modular, which is based out of Pennsylvania. In a month or so you might pass our house heading down the highway as it's being delivered! We visited the factory in the fall and I was blown away. Henry Ford would be proud. The line starts with assembling the floor segments out of 2"x12"s in a jig. The tongue and groove plywood in glued and nail down on top. A huge crane grabs the floor segment (in the case of the posted pic about 48'x14') and moves it to the next station. Walls, drywall, electric, plumbing, windows,roof, siding and fixtures are all done in the factory. Some things are shipped "loose" and assembled/installed on site.
We put our down payment down and our house should be starting through this line this month. Pretty exciting. I guess technically we could make another trip down and see our house being built.
We moved to upstate New york about a year ago and were anxious to buy our first home. After looking at what was available for several months we were very disappointed at the quality of the homes that we could afford. We than started to think about building, but when we found out local builders were getting $200 a square foot we realized we couldn't get what we want down that road either. Crap.
There was a modular house seller about 30 minutes away so after looking at their examples we started to do some research. Across the board everyone one we spoke with was very happy with their modular homes and we were impressed with the quality. I admit that I thought modulars were in the same league as double wides, but it turns out I was simply ignorant. They are built to state code (2x6 constuction, etc.), are less wasteful (green), less expensive (at least in our neck of the woods) and can be put up in a fraction of the time. What really convinced me is when we met a home builder who bought a had a modular built for his family. Cool!
We started looking for land and found a nice piece but it was already under contract. A few weeks later we were notified that the deal fell through so we put in a bid and got the land early September of 2007. We decide to hold off building until Spring '08 but when ahead and had the site prep done which consisted of clearing land, digging the foundation hole and installing a driveway.
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