The crunch is on to try to get the floor finished and the house sealed back up with the wooden bucks before the really cold weather arrives. We have found out they all need to come down for the floor to be poured and then right back up again because of the colder weather. We have space heaters ready and plan to keep working though the winter with the ultimate goal of being able to move in this upcoming summer/fall.
We have been busy installing all the under slab insulation, reinforcement and the radiant floor system. All seams and cut openings are spray foamed and taped to fully seal them up. We have also installed an expansion joint around the edges of where the slab will contact already poured concrete. Our plans called for 1" rigid insulation on all slab edges but we worked with the building inspector and instead put the insulation (sprayed) on the exterior of the house covering the connection of the airform to the foundation. This works as air and vapor sealing as well as insulation.
In our original plans the slab design called for 2 different depths of compacted stone. One level around all the perimeter that was 2 inches deeper and extends 2 feet into the interior allowing for a 6 inch concrete slab on only the edges. Another level that was 2 inches higher in the center of all the domes allowing for a 4 inch concrete slab. It ends up creating a slab that is thicker on every edge that touches existing concrete. As soon as we started to fill the house with the stone and order our under slab insulation we realized how much of a pain this was going to be to install and get it flat. The stone is difficult to get perfect when it is just one level much less getting 2 levels in rings that is perfect and compacted. The real issue was the insulation waste. We would be cutting concentric rings of 2 inch insulation for each dome. The outside ring would be like a 2 foot wide flat hoola hoop of insulation in each dome. Cutting curves on both the inside and outside of very rectangular sheets to make our big weird hoola hoops is a huge waste of material. We went back to the engineer and asked if we really needed to do it. Could we make it all 4 inches thick like every other residential indoor slab? Or can we make it all 6 inches thick? Did it really have to be concentric rings of stepped stone and cut insulation? He agreed to it all being 6 inches but we would need to reinforce it more. By more I mean 2 layers of wire mesh mats. Ugg.... We decided that even though it would require more concrete and more steel it was worth it to save both on an amazing amount of insulation waste and the headache it would cause trying to build it. With the 6 inch plan we just had to make it all one level, compact it and lay one layer of the insulation. After getting one dome done it hit us..... We can just put another 2 inch layer of insulation in the center to go back to the original plan of a slab that was 6 inches on the outer edges and 4 inches in the center. The cost difference between more insulation and more concrete and mesh is a wash BUT insulation improves efficiency! We also now go back to only needing one layer of mesh. It seemed like a no brainer to us and we kick ourselves for not thinking of it right away. During our conversation with the engineer he talked about passive house design calling for up to 6 inches of insulation under slabs. This easy solution apparently didn't occur to anyone! Yes this does mean we needed to cut more curves but it is only the outer edge and it didn't need to be perfect since it will all be covered in concrete anyway. It ends up being a bonus layer of insulation where the center of every dome (except the outer 24 inches is 4 inches of under slab insulation at an R20).
Just laying another inner 2 inch layer right on top of the bottom 2 inch layer is an infinitely easier way of getting the thicker slab edges that the engineer wanted for strength reasons and keeping the center at 4 inches which is more efficient with the radiant floor heat AND made even more efficient with an additional 2 inches of insulation over most of the floor. Can I have a big Hooooray for thinking of it!
We have also been back up to our eyeballs in quotes for two reasons. First is for the slab pour. I contacted 8 companies that will come to our area to give us quotes. Several of them were specialized decorative concrete companies and a couple were companies that do flatwork along with other stuff. Of the 8 I only received 3 quotes. Most never followed up with an actual quote after our initial phone conversation. One said they would send me a quote but ghosted us after seeing the plans. That is a very familiar feeling from when I was trying to find a contractor to do our foundation and how we ended up doing it ourselves. Two of the three actually came out to look at the site. I immediately gravitate towards them because I feel like they won't last minute add on additional cost because they accurately know what they are getting into. We would love to go with one of the specialty companies. I do think they understand what needs to be done in order to have a perfect floor that will eventually be polished BUT we flat out can't afford them. Every part of this build runs over and it has to give somewhere. That somewhere is the slab right now. We are then left with 2 options. Do it ourselves... Booo Hissss
Or... hire a company that seems to do good work but may not be as perfect as the specialty companies. I am pretty sure they will be able to do better than we could do AND I am very aware of how much hard work goes into pouring over 2700 sqft of slab. If they don't get it perfect we will just spend more time polishing. That is the part we can do ourselves!
The second reason is window related....again.... We started the process of finalizing our arch top windows and realized at the last second the quote we were using was for rectangular windows. Eek! I had been going back and forth with the company very clearly discussing arch and round top windows the entire time (over a month) and the quote he sent was for their regular casement windows without any arch! I only noticed because the picture on the paperwork showed a rectangular window. The only good news is it worked out anyway. We had to pay a few hundred dollars a window more but it didn't blow the budget as much as I feared. The up side is that we now are getting ROUND top windows! These will match the doors much better. It is still the same window company that I posted photos of a few entries ago but they will be slightly different than the photo. This is just another instance of things running over budget. It seems everything goes over a little bit to a lot. It is almost never the other way.
We are all set for the pour. Our last pressure test on the radiant system is complete and everything is good. We are super excited to have a floor very soon!
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