Looks Good

Last night, Shawn, Evan and I took a tour of the site. You can sort of see the rebar in place along the footings, but for some reason there are a few areas that do not have any. I'm not sure if the concrete set up before they had a chance to finish this. Since these rebar are used for shear strength between the wall and the footing, they can just drill into the concrete and drop the rebar in. It's basically used so that the basement wall won't slide off the footing when the soild is backfilled since there will be a cold joint between the concrete at that spot. Later in the evening, I worked on windows sporadically while watching Evan, and Shawn began to cut the rebar to size that will be placed vertically inside the wall. We're using a chop saw with a metal blade to cut through the 5/8" bars. We also worked on double checking the rebar placement for the frost wall, so that when they pour it, they can place the rebar where it needs to go. This rebar will be sticking out about 24" inches. When the basement wall is poured, the pieces of rebar that Shawn is cutting will be dropped in next to the ones in the frost wall. That overlap ensures that loads are transfered directly to the footings below.
I have a nasty cold this week, so I took the morning off to rest. I got up late when a delivery truck arrived with the rest of the foam blocks for the basement. Again, that powerline going across our driveway is too low and the truck couldn't make it in to deliver. So Junior had to use the skid loader to unload the block from the truck. So here's the second pile of blocks. That seems like a lot of block. We definitely have a lot of work ahead of us!
Bill and his crew went right at work when I went to check out the site. They hung the string between the batterboards and laid out the back wall. You can see in the picture how the wall stacks up. The yellow bar leaning against the dirt is a 6 foot level that they use to check that the wall is plumb, and level, and they use a squaring laser to ensure the walls are square. Since I was up, I decided to go into work. So when I left, Bill was scheduled to pour the frost wall in the afternoon. He was also going to backfill some pea gravel on the outside of the frost wall right above the footings. And tonight, Shawn and I will roll out some landscape fabric so that Bill can finish backfilling the frost wall tomorrow. The fabric helps to keep silt and dirt from filtering into the footing drains and clogging them up, so we will have good drainage. Jon told is that typically frost walls are not drained, but since the hole is dug, we decided it won't hurt to run the pipe now. Also, Bill said that if he had time, he would begin marking the exterior perimeter of the house, so tomorrow they can lay down the first coarse of block. Then we take it from there.