A Slow Week

Trench and rebar for the driveway retaining wall

Sad to say, nothing much happened at the site this week. A little work was done laying some of the steel for the driveway retaining wall, but for the most part we were awaiting delivery of the polystyrene forms that will be used to build both the foundation wall and, later, the basement walls.

Blue sky, blue sea

These building blocks are called Insulated Concrete Forms, or ICFs, and they will enable us to get the walls built quickly and efficiently, with the added benefit that they are a very green product. The forms provide a high R-value (the measure of insulation), and are made of recycled material. Since they are themselves forms, we won't need to build wasteful forms out of plywood, saving both manpower and wood, the latter of which would have to be thrown away after use.

Delivery of the forms to the site is expected tomorrow, and once there, we should see a lot of progress in the following days. I don't know right now exactly what our particular ICFs will look like, but they'll be something like what's shown below, with concrete poured into the gaps between the two layers of foam, forming a tasty foam and concrete sandwich. Mmmm...