Stem Wall Rebar Complete

We have been busy bees! I kinda want to be the flying panda.... not sure which one Mr. Dometastic is.

Mr. Dometastic and I are taking as much time off from work and other things as we can to get this stem wall ready to pour ASAP.

In a week and a half we finished the rebar for the stem wall, water proof coated the exterior of the footer and installed the curtain drain! Oh and still worked. What I haven't had much time for is writing this blog BUT I did take lots of photos and video.

The rebar for the stem wall was so much faster and easier than the footer! So far the form system that we chose to go with is working awesome. It seems similar to ICF to me but without the styrofoam block part and just the plastic centers. We looked into using curved ICF blocks but could only find them in 6" thickness not 8". This forming system comes in several thickness (including the 8" we needed) and is called Spider Tie. There are many YouTube videos showing how they can be used. We explored everything we could think of and stumbled across the Spider Ties. We decided to just do it in the hopes that it would be as easy as it seemed watching all the YouTube videos. We aren't done yet but so far so good and the company has been great as well! The ordering and shipping was easy and fast. We have had questions during the build and very quickly get support from the company. By quickly I mean immediate call back answering questions and advice on best practices. So far they get a double thumbs up from the Dometastic family.

The Spider Tie plastic brackets have places to run rebar and are stacked and clicked together to form towers. You can easily make curves and/or straight walls. Then plywood is screwed directly to the plastic brackets. Very little exterior bracing is needed for pouring. Finger crossed that all goes as planned!

We first attached the starter brackets to the green concrete. We waited a bit too long so it wasn't as easy to hammer in the nails as it could have been. Then the first tie is snapped in place to hold the bottom rebar.

Then we started stacking the brackets and installing our rebar as we went up each level.

Click HERE to watch a short super speed video of snapping the ties together.

After we completed ties and horizontal rebar we sealed the outside of the footer and installed the curtain drain. Now we don't have to stress out every time it rains and washes silt into the trench.

Curtain drain installed in gravel around the outside of the footer. It was a bit comical rolling out a 250 foot GIANT roll of 4 inch floppy tubing. I did get some video of it but it is actually kinda boring to watch us struggle with it. It was definitely easier to install flexible socked tubing than trying to fit straight sections with an unknown number of joints all the way around the footer perimeter.

 Next we sistered all the vertical stem wall rebar to the vertical rebar that was in the footer. These tall ones will go through the ring beam and connect to the rebar of the dome.

The next step is adding the plywood skin to the forms. We started that this week and I am optimistic. We were a little worried how easy this part would be but it continues to be pretty easy to install. I will do a separate post on adding plywood when we are done with it.

Last but not least Mr. Dometastic did another drone fly over of the finished stem wall towers with all the horizontal rebar done. Click HERE to watch.