"Starting the Basement!"

Here we are installing the door buck for the sliding patio doors for our daylight basement. All of these components must be straight and level, but are never straight enough.	We placed the corner bracing for the blocks first and nailed 2x4's into place to hold the blocks in line. This time of the morning gave us a little shade on a hot day.
Here you can see the patio door buck in place. To the left of the door buck you can see the pet entrance for the cats. They might be spoiled with their own entrance.	All the Styrofoam blocks needed to be glued in place in a very straight line around the rebar. We are cutting a hole in the blocks for the pet entrance.
We also had to run horizontal rebar around the whole basement at a couple of levels. All the rebar had to be wired to each other to keep it in place properly.	Styrofoam blocks stacked up and glued together made quick work of the basement outer walls. We were up to the window level in one day, not too bad.
Rebar had to extend up from the footing and extend up to the top of the proposed wall. It had to be 5/8" on the sided that were backfilled, and 1/2" everywhere else.	The Styrofoam walls had to be braced and leveled and adjusted. We had to build wooden scaffolding around the inside and use that as bracing for the structure.
All the window bucks needed to be built first and made of pressure treated wood. The door bucks were set into place first and braced with angle bracing.	The scaffolding on the inside gave us the height to build the wall, and something to brace the wall to that would stabilize it enough to pour the center with concrete.
The blocks had to be braced from the inside and outside and then the bracing was wired together through the blocks to keep things lined up properly	The concrete pumper truck arrives from 90 miles and needs to be coordinated with the concrete and our crew to do the pouring of the blocks.
Michael needed to tap the wall while the concrete was poured to get things to flow and settle. He also nervously watched for leaks and blow outs.	The blocks were filled to only the 4' level on the first pass so things could settle evenly. It was heavy concrete and shook the Styrofoam blocks while pouring.
The man in the yellow shirt was running the remote control for the concrete pumper truck. He stood close by so he could control the flow precisely.	Michael needed to place each "J" bolt into place and stabilize it while the concrete was still wet. These were for securing the sill plate in place.
After the concrete dried and stabilized, Michael needed to drill and secure the sill plate into place. A vapor barrier was placed between the sill plate and the concrete.	Where ever we planned to backfill the basement with dirt, we had to waterproof it. We used a self adhesive rubber like material and cover with a water wicking felt protection.
Drain pipe covered with rock and garden fabric was placed all around the footing for the basement walls to provide drainage away from the house.	Drain pipe covered with rock and garden fabric was placed all around the footing for the basement walls to provide drainage away from the house.
This is a photo of the plumbing that went underground for the bathrooms in the basement. This was a strangely complex configuration.	Trenches need to be dug under where some shear wall would go, and all plumbing needed to be wrapped and capped.
It was 90° on the day we poured the basement floor, which caused extra problems when it set up too quickly. But things worked out well. We connect it all with a cement sidewalk around the outside of the basement.	I had to place rebar at 1 foot on center in both directions and extra in trenches under walls. All bolts for bolting down walls needed to be in place. This crew did a really fine job of getting things perfect.
Inner walls took a little longer since they had to be bolted to the cement slab floor. It was extremely hot in the summer inside this Styrofoam walled area.	To make the basement walls stable, several of the walls had to be shear walls. They had to have plywood covering the walls with nails every 4" and then sheet rocked.
After waterproofing material was placed against the blocks, we backfilled around the basement and sloped away from the house.	We covered the basement with black plastic for the winter. I spent lots of time patching holes in the plastic. I used the time to wire the basement.