A Short Stint Until The Holiday Break

Mother Nature has not let up.  So not a lot accomplished since the last update.  We were chased off the mountain a couple of times by storms, including, by a blizzard about a week before I planned to shut down for the holidays.  Decided we better shut down early, or we might wind up spending Christmas in the construction office.

But we got a few things accomplished.

But first, as always, the farm report.

One of the herds of wild horses wandered up the ridge, and were hanging out a couple of hundred yards from the property.

And the weather report.

So........ what happens when you do not plan your steel roof for 120-140 mph winds?  That will be a topic of discussion with the roofing manufacturers I am considering.  This place was in the path of the hurricane winds we had last month.

Now back to work.  What little there was between storms.

Formed the wall curbs and the water pump(s) platform in the mechanical storage building.

Time for concrete slabs.  Poured the workshop and mechanical/storage building wall curbs first. 

The next day, the forms are stripped from the wall curbs and pump platform to pour the slab in the mechanical/storage building.

The outbuilding slabs are power-troweled to a hard trowel finish.

And just in time for, guess what?  Yup!  Got the slabs all covered with curing blankets, and packed up and left as the next storm was moving in.  They are still sitting under the blankets and will be like that until the wall and truss packages are delivered after the first of the year.

In the mechanical room of the main house, the interior ICF foam is stripped away from the concrete foundation wall.  This is necessary so that the conduits that come out of the slab in that room can come up near the wall curb and not 2+ inches away from it.

I was planning on using a liquid rubber waterproofing on the exterior of the house foundation.  But, it needs 24 hours above freezing to cure, and storm delays caused the temperature to catch up.  So I to use roll water-proofing instead.  Temperature is still too cold for it to stick well to the foam, but on this sandstone mountain, it really isn't necessary to start with.  Just provides some protection to the ICF foam.  Not really worried about any kind of water infiltration.

After another storm, we started backfilling the main house foundation.  We got about a foot or so from the top before we ran out of dirt that was not filled with "permafrost".  So the main house foundation will sit until spring before any further work is done on it.

Coming Up

The next 2-3 months will be spent working on the out-buildings.  And that is where we will pick things up after the holidays.