formwork

Our contractor's concrete guys are setting up the formwork for the concrete slab (the floor for the whole house) and the reinforced edge beam around the perimeter of the house. They won't pour the slab until the week after next, but they needed to set up the formwork in order for the plumber, electrician and air conditioning contractor to lay their conduit and pipes under the slab next week.

Like the footings, the slab will have blast furnace slag in the cement mixture in order to reduce the amount of virgin material in the concrete.

The Bobcat showed up today. They are using it to level and compact the sand that the slab will rest on. We've been building concrete structures like this for over a century, and our most economical method for leveling and grading is still running a Bobcat back and forth. It's not the most fuel-efficient way to prep the site, but it's faster than doing it by hand with an enormous roller (it's already about 90 degrees out at the site, so rolling the site by hand would seem unnecessarily cruel).

The sand base for the slab needs to be compacted to help keep the concrete slab from cracking. It will also form a barrier against some of the termites that come burrowing their way up into houses from below.

Our contractor set up a box for temporary electrical power at the site. It is waiting for inspection by the city and for our local utility to set up an account for the house. It's not certain which process will drag on longer.