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A Busy Week...Footing Forms and Footings Poured!

Its been another busy week.  Despite being cold its been above 0 Celsius consistently.  With the footings dug the next logical step was pouring them.  We had the surveyor re-pin the foundation location and the footing contractor, Todd Brenton, set up the footing forms.  The lot was pretty level so for the most part, we have a 8" footing everywhere except one small length where its about 6 3/4".  The whole foundation will be setting on a structural rock bed which was originally tamped using a large vibratory roller and now has been further tamped, to compress the loose rock after digging, using a large diesel plate tamper.

Although I was a little unsure about the levelling process now that I have seen it, its much simpler than what I was expecting.  The footing contractor lays out the forms according to the survey pins.  he then uses a transit to find the highest/lowest point.  The go to the corners and sights an elevation and pound a nail into the inside of the form.  then they go to another corner, or along the form, sighting elevations to match the previous.  Then they snap a chalk line between the nails on the inside of the forms and that gives them a measure of how much concrete to pour.    This work took about a day.  The concrete gets poured in less than 20 mins.  As the concrete was poured one of the labourors follows behind levelling the footing to the lines with a shovel by moving the concrete around.  Another guy followed, further flattening the concrete with the end of rake.  What you are left with is a poured footing, ready to set up over night to a nice set of hard concrete footings....A solid foundation for the Flatrock Passive House.










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