Update on New Home

[ragswl4]

No I bet the directions were only in Spanish and he thought he could wing it from what he learned in his 9th grade Spanish class.

Doing construction in California without Spanish speaking workers, don't think so. I doubt the instructions were the problem. In fairness to all, the foundation was not an easy one given the location and terrain of the building site. I guess I'm too easy on the contractor but then the wife and I are the general contractor so we should have checked often and early on to prevent this kind of problem. Thing is I doubt we would have caught it. It didn't really show up until we finished the cripple walls to bring the height of the foundation up to the same level all the way around on the first floor. As are also the framers, there's probably some fault there too. All in all we are well satisfied with the building so far. Heck, we saved over 50% of what a general contractor wanted to get the house where it is now. No real complaints.

[JR]

Rags, the place is looking great! You have done a great job.

Re: the foundation. That was a tricky deal from the gitgo. Plus we just don't see that many foundations in SoCal. Not the way they are done back east, anyway. My point being that we just don't have the expertise built in to our contractor population. Nice job recovering from the problems, though.

JR

[ragswl4]

Rags, the place is looking great! You have done a great job.

Re: the foundation. That was a tricky deal from the gitgo. Plus we just don't see that many foundations in SoCal. Not the way they are done back east, anyway. My point being that we just don't have the expertise built in to our contractor population. Nice job recovering from the problems, though.

JR

You are spot on with your observation. Our architect warned us that we should ensure that we get a contractor from "On the Hill" to do the foundation but budget drove us to hire from the "flat land". Of course the architect was right. In case some haven't seen the foundation, here's a couple of pics of what we had to work with. Problems were on the extreme right side of the pictures where the foundation was the deepest. Four inches out of square and 4" lower. Maybe too much cerveza that day.

[Wood_workur]

Wow. Wanna trade houses?

What does the back look like?
And how is that thing anchored from going down the hill? or isn't it?

[ragswl4]

Wow. Wanna trade houses?

What does the back look like?
And how is that thing anchored from going down the hill? or isn't it?

Here is a pic from the back of the house from about a mile away(left) It was cropped so not that good a photo. The pic on the right is from just below the house and the granite outcropping on which it sits. There are around 300+ 5/8" rebars epoxed into the granite at least 8" deep (meets code). Do I wanna trade houses, not really. I got blood and skin and a million splinters invested in this house. It's the wife's dream home so we will both probably expire there.

[crokett]

Re: the foundation. That was a tricky deal from the gitgo. Plus we just don't see that many foundations in SoCal. Not the way they are done back east, anyway.

Uhh... dumb question, but what do houses sit on if they don't sit on foundations?

[ragswl4]

Uhh... dumb question, but what do houses sit on if they don't sit on foundations?

Not a dumb question. Most homes in California are built on concrete slabs with footings around the perimeter. Its not too often that a house is built with a raised floor although there are many older (50-60 year old) homes that sit above ground with pillars underneath that serve as the foundation. I think most home that are built in the mountains are built on a traditional foundation. Our site was an exception as there was very few places where they could actually dig down so most of the foundation walls were pinned to the granite with rebar.

[crokett]

Oh ok. I was calling basically the concrete that is in the ground that the house sits on a foundation, be it footings or traditional crawl space. Here in NC we have both types. It mostly depends on budget as to how the house is built.

[Kristofor]

Here is a pic from the back of the house from about a mile away(left) It was cropped so not that good a photo.

You know, regardless of the the quality of the photo there's something great about any house where you can take an unobstructed picture from a mile away. Based on your view of the other peaks it appears that some of the sight-lines are much longer than that.

Looks like it's coming together well. It's been more fun to watch your house coming together than I had watching when mine was built!

If the foundation guys weren't from "on the hill" and couldn't make the foundation square and level, do you have any worries about how the rebar is anchored or any of their other work?

Kristofor.

[ragswl4]

You know, regardless of the the quality of the photo there's something great about any house where you can take an unobstructed picture from a mile away. Based on your view of the other peaks it appears that some of the sight-lines are much longer than that.

Looks like it's coming together well. It's been more fun to watch your house coming together than I had watching when mine was built!

If the foundation guys weren't from "on the hill" and couldn't make the foundation square and level, do you have any worries about how the rebar is anchored or any of their other work?

Kristofor.

I don't have any worries about the foundation. Every hole and every rebar was sight inspected by the county building inspector. I did see all the rebar work and the contractor "doubled" all the rebar on his own. So there is twice as much rebar in the building as required by the county. I feel pretty confident that part is beyond specification. Building has been fun except for the do overs.

[crokett]

How'd you correct for 4" out of square when you were doing the framing? Did you start one end at the edge of the block on one end and end up on the opposite edge on the other?

[Hellrazor]

How'd you correct for 4" out of square when you were doing the framing? Did you start one end at the edge of the block on one end and end up on the opposite edge on the other?

You don't fix it, you hide it and hope nobody brings a square along to check corners.

The 4" height difference is the one that really sucks to fix.

[ragswl4]

How'd you correct for 4" out of square when you were doing the framing? Did you start one end at the edge of the block on one end and end up on the opposite edge on the other?

I hope I can explain this properly. The back of the house was 4" shorter than the front. Turned out each back corner was 2" short from the center of the back of the house to the left and right wall. So we framed up all the cripple walls and plumbed them. We then squared up both ends by hanging the rim board for the first floor out two inches on the left and right side walls. That squared the house floor. We then cut long wedges (maybe 6' long) and starting at the back of the house they were 2" thick. Using the rim board as a guide along both side walls we used smaller and smaller wedges to fill in under the rim board while nailing the wedge shims to the studs in the cripple walls. Attached the shear wall plywood to the studs and fixed. When we finished the 50+ foot x 40 foot 1st floor was within 3/8" square when measuring diagonally. We thought that was close enough.

What we forgot to do was consider the support posts and glulam beams for the deck. They ended up 2" inside the wall line on both sides. It will be noticeable if you lean over the side of the deck and look at. That is if you know something about house construction, if not then it probably won't even be noticed.

Hope I was clear enough on how we did it.

[ragswl4]

The 4" height difference is the one that really sucks to fix.

You are right about that. We chased that 4" all the way to the ridge line of the roof 25 ft above the 1st floor. Adjusting rafter length and angle of the birds mouth on the walls helped to fix that. It is not even noticeable now. (Unless you know where to look and I ain't tellin). If we had used trusses for the roof we would have been in real trouble.

When I look at the house I still can't believe how straight and level everything is. I hate to beat our own drum but I think we did good. My wife is really good at figuring out how to correct problems.

Nail count:125,000

[ragswl4]

Great News for Us!

Today we passed the framing, rough electrical and plumbing on the garage. Next inspection is the final. Permit on the house is separate and unknown to me the wife called for the framing inspection on the house as well and WE PASSED that also. Inpsector only asked for one additional strap to be installed on a glulam and he found two loose bolts on a couple of hold downs. Fixed it on the spot and he signed off.

What a load off of our minds. Now its on to the windows, roofing, rough electrical and plumbing in the house.

The inspector was quite impressed with the framing in the house. We added around 50-75 straps where they were not required by the plans but we felt would add to the strength of the structure. Our architect and a local builder that I play golf with told us the inspector likes to see metal so what we did may have helped persuade him that we know what we are doing.