We stopped by the lot tonight to check out the new garage floor and back fill. Backfill is pushed into the trenches around the exterior of the foundation walls, burying a portion or all of the walls below the surface for added stability. Ideally, backfill is soil that drains easily, ours happens to be sand which is ideal. Now that all the dirt has been pushed up to the foundation we can get an idea of what the size of the yard is like (very exciting!!!) and the height of the house in comparison to the street.

The garage floor also looked perfect and will soon be home to our drywall. Mike was kind enough to explain that it was important to finish the garage floor early so we have a clean place to store the drywall…one of the factors that must be considered when building a home during the winter months.

We’re just getting to the first exciting part of building a home. What was a hole in the ground now has our foundation walls, support beams, rough plumbing (if you want a bathroom in the basement), and drain tiles. The drain tiles seem to be a set of perforated plastic tubing set in gravel. If water gathers around the tubing, which is unlikely since it is built on mostly sand, the tubing will take the water to the sump pump. It is actually looking like a house at this point. Well, the bottom part at least.

Mike shows us insulation board and how it works. Windows too.

We found this extremely interesting. The tile drainage systems looks more like rocks and a long pipe. Bit it is a  system that collects subsurface water and moves it away from the foundation. Foundation drainage tile consists of a continuous run of perforated drainage pipes embedded in gravel along the outside perimeter of the footings. The great thing about Freedom is the openings face down so that soil doesn’t get in and back up the system. Seems logical, right? Well a lot of builders don’t do this!

Mike points out the drain tile, the sock and more.

So I have been doing some reading (shocking for those of you who know me, ha) on the steps of a foundation. I found it extremely interesting how poured foundation works so I explain how forms are used below:

Take a peek at a foundation form. C’mon – you know you want to.

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon so we decided we wanted to go back to the lot and check it out some more. We took more photos, video and just basked in the glory of what was the beginning of our home!

We saw the cool piles of back fill and saw the anchor bolts on the house now that the forms were gone.  Anchor bolts are embedded at pre-determined points along the top of the foundation walls. They’ll be used during framing to secure the framing to the foundation.

Eric recaps the foundation and what’s going on with the back fill.