Our foundation is illegal

I stopped by the code office this morning to see what the resolution was for tying the rebar. Joe Riddle (Nudura) was already there, meeting with them. Turns out that our foundation is illegal. Because we are using ICF "walls" for our columns, the space inside the walls is now considered enclosed. The maximum enclosed area allowed is 300 ft², and ours is 2400 ft². (We had submitted our revised foundation to them, but they had no record of ever receiving it. Typical for this office.)

Any amount of logic was immaterial to the conversation. Hydrostatics versus velocity was irrelevant. To satisfy code, we have to tear down the walls and put columns in - i.e., we need to weaken our foundation. Seeing that it was a losing battle, Joe turned into damage-control mode suggesting meetings to make sure that this isn't a problem for other houses that are being designed on the coast right now. I gritted my teeth and kept from threatening to burn their building down until I got outside.

So, our pour for this afternoon is cancelled. Our worthless engineer is heading out of town on vacation for a week, so Joe is going to set up a meeting between the engineer, code office, and himself for the following week to figure out how elevated ICF houses on the coast should be constructed, hopefully resolving our issue at the same time.

Crunch Time

The pour is scheduled for noon today and the crew showed up at 6 a.m. to finish the bracing, set the brackets for the framing, fix anything that needs to be fixed, and do a general clean-up. The big issue though is that we failed our inspection yesterday. The county says that the vertical rebar in the walls needs to be tied to the verticals coming out of the chain wall. We had the same question earlier in the week, but the contractor and the Joe the Nudura rep all said that they didn't. We went along with their decision, but in the meantime also tripled the number of verticals in the walls (that was Tuesday's crisis - the PE stamped drawings are worthless and had not specified the rebar, and with our large openings, none of the standard design tables are applicable).

Anyways, the building inspectors are meeting this morning to make a decision on tying the rebar. The only way to get to the rebar is to cut holes every 2' in the bottom of the walls, which then need to be patched. All the ICF documentation strongly recommends that the rebar be tied, but does not require it.

It's shaping up to be a long day!

ICF 102

The ICF blocks are like giant legos that have teeth that snap together. The ICF crew took great care to ensure that the teeth and the studs (plastic embedded in the blocks every 8”) would line up correctly. And after that, things have gone downhill fast.

For this pour, the walls will be 7 blocks high (18” * 7 = 10.5’). Here’s how things should have progressed: once the first two levels of are blocks in, they are supposed to make the walls square, level, and plumb. They add shims as needed, and glue everything down (shims and all). Then they make corner braces (out of 2x4’s or 2x6’s) and place these at all the corners, making sure the braces are square, level, and plumb. That way, after the 10.5’ wall is assembled, the bottom and the corners are right. Then they brace the entire walls to be square, level, and plumb before coming off the braces so that the walls are slightly out of plumb (between corners) for the pour. After the concrete is poured, and before it is set, the braces are used to push the walls back plumb. (Strings are run prior to the pour that help with this.)

As far as I can tell, the crew never checked for squareness. The slab is close to square, so hopefully this isn’t a big deal. They have 6 blocks up and no corner bracing. They checked for levelness at about the 3rd block high, but used a defective level, then a good level, but the bottoms of the walls still don’t look right. Shims were not glued. We also had them redo a lot of the rebar work to get the correct laps at splices and to ensure that splices were spaced apart correctly.

The pour is scheduled for Tuesday – it’ll probably be Thursday or Friday. So hopefully we will get Joe out for a pre-pour inspection on Wednesday, after the crew signs off that the walls are done.

Frustration, frustration, frustration

David took a neat picture from the bridge - you can see the old slab on the left side of the picture, and the new slab on the right side. The new slab is almost 5' higher than the old slab, and is significantly larger.

It's been a long month with no progress. And now that they are working, things are crazy again. Sorry for the lack of updates. Here's what's been going on this last week:







Here's the cast of characters:

Erica: me
David: my husband
CDG: Central Development Group, our contractor
Pat: The owner of CDG
Chris: The latest guy that was assigned to manage our project
Roy: CDG's sub-contracts administrator - he's ok, he fishes
Joe: the local Nudura sales-rep, who we bought our blocks from
Lintel: Opening (new word for me)
Kiercey the dog: "It's hot out here"

As expected, they started back on our house on Friday (only a day late). Chris told the guys that the plans and the Nudura blocks were at the job site. We have given every plan we have to CDG, and they have all of our blocks. Disorganization seems to be the rule. We were not at all confident that CDG has thought out the details of the next pour so Joe met me at the house to go over the engineer's drawing and to talk concrete. I won't bore you with pancake batter concrete versus brownie mix that needs more oil concrete, and the differences in vibration and pour depths based on the concrete consistency. I certainly didn't get it all. While here, Joe looked over what the block guys were doing and showed them how to do the corner detail correctly. The way they had it would have blown out. Later that afternoon Chris showed up - not sure what he did. I'm not even sure if he got out of his truck.

Over the weekend, Joe showed us another Nudura house that has the rebar and stirrups set above the lintels. Our frustration is that we are stuck doing all the QC (Quality Control) on our project and we don't know enough about concrete, rebar details, or framing around the lintels to be comfortable with this. Talking with Joe was a big help, plus he promised to visit our job site frequently to make sure everything is being done right.

Roy has stopped by several times in the last two days and has essentially taken over managing the project. He has also been consulting with Joe. Chris has been next-to-useless. In between talking fishing, David and Roy talked about brackets, concrete, and placing the joists before the concrete is poured. They decided that placing the joists before-hand was one of Pat's hair-brained ideas. I guess he must have gone back to the office and told Pat that we weren't going to set the joists because Pat showed up to talk to David about it. He's supposed to come back again tomorrow. We'll see. Honestly, I don't care how they do it as long as it's done right, but I can't tell that they've thought through all the details. In fact, we still don't know what brackets to use for some of the walls, and the brackets we think they should use might take special ordering. Funny, I thought that hiring an engineering and using an experienced ICF crew would have made the job go smoother.

Then there's the Grade 40 rebar that I bought versus the Grade 60 that the engineer drawings specify. For the most part we're just as strong since we are using a larger rebar. And I double checked the sizing requirements and determined that we are ok.

Still trying to order doors. Our back doors will cost more than our front door! But I have decided on a door and a brand (Neuma) and am just waiting (still) on the quotes. Well, waiting for one more quote. I've given up on the idiot I ordered windows from. She's had 2 months to get me a quote. I have no idea how they stay in business. Joe sells Neuma's so I'm waiting on a quote from him. I have a qoute from a salesman in AL. Pricey! But I like the 8' tall french door quad-unit so will pay what I have to pay. At least they're cheaper than the Pella's ($4,200!).

I wouldn't recommend him to my worst enemy...

We went to see one of Central's other houses tonight (I am trying to choose doors and wanted to see some on another house). We encountered the home owners, who were not at all complementary of our builder. Their house was supposed to be finished May 5th, and the owner said she would be going into litigation if it wasn't finished by July. Given the amount of work to be done (siding, fireplace, cabinets, plumbing, sheetrock, flooring, etc.), I guess they are going into litigation.

After yet another week's delay, the builder assured me that they will be starting tomorrow or the next day. So maybe they'll start Friday or Saturday! I'm not too concerned about the delays (other than the frustration factor, and the fact that we have a bunch of wood sitting in the weather for the last month), but I am concerned about some of the quality of the house we were in this evening. None of the openings for the doors and windows were right. Where they had cut the foam and boards away to increase the size of the openings, the concrete had voids. I have contacted the local Nudura Rep. and we will either get a crash course on how the concrete is to be poured and vibrated, and/or we will hire him to oversee the next pour.

I did order windows last Friday. The dealer was busy at a job site (I think that the job site is her house that is, coincidentally, also being built by Central Development). So she had her son meet me at the office and I acted as an employee of the company and ordered my own windows. I am still paying her a 20% mark-up, but at least I don't have to pay Central their 10% cut. After 2 months of getting the run-around from Central on ordering doors and windows, I am trying to find a different source for our french doors.

The doors for our living room are going to cost more than our front door. Depending on the source, they may cost more than all the windows. And we are looking at the "cheap" vinyl doors. The Andersons and Pellas cost 3x more! Going to 8' tall doors, and having a quad unit (two operating doors flanked by two fixed doors) has driven the cost up substantially. I think there is a "luxury" factor at work, although it may be that they just don't sell as many units of these so maybe that's why they are so expensive. Anyways, so far the cheapest quote for this unit is $2200. Ouch!

I've been super frustrated this week. Mad that I had to order my own windows. Mad that I might have to pay Central a 10% mark-up even though I spent 3 hours making sure the windows were right, mad that I can't get a door quote, and mad that our build was being delayed yet another week while our material that I rushed to get ordered sits in the yard and rots. But Pat was super-nice about not charging me the 10% mark-up, the windows are ordered, and (maybe) they will be back on our project this week. With David on-site, and with advice from the distributor, I think that the next pour will go ok. Yeah, it sucks that we have to jump through so many hoops, but I think that we would be dealing with these issues with 95% of the contractors in the area.

Would I recommend my contractor? Yes, but with major reservations. If my friend needed someone who would do a turn-key job and would do a good job with little oversite, no way. But I'd also be wishing my friend good luck in finding that perfect contractor! So I'll be going to work tomorrow and will tell Mark that maybe Central isn't the best contractor to build his mother's house.