Week 5 and 6
Six weeks! That is a milestone to be excited about. We are both fully recovered from our brush with covid a few weeks ago.
SugarField has had some big changes happen during week 5 and 6. Part of the excitement of the last few weeks, is that we are getting to see things happening and being put into place, that we will never be able see again because they are all going to be below grade or covered in concrete. It is like we are burying treasures for ourselves in the future. Hopefully these treasures will help keep our home warm, dry, and cozy. We also hope they will help with our energy efficiency and keep our heating and cooling costs down. The weather hasn’t been our friend and the rain has slowed the process down quite a bit and it feels like we are building a swimming pool.
After the forms came off the concrete basement walls, a crew arrived to install waterproofing. It appears to be a coat of thick sticky substance painted onto the walls. The black sticky coating was then covered by yellow foam. From our extensive research on YouTube, the black sticky substance is what actually helps the concrete be water resistant while the yellow “foam” isn’t really foam at all. The yellow boards are designed to shed water towards the drainage that is in place at the footer. Water is foundation enemy number one and we have had a lot of that this week.
The other exciting development is that our geothermal loops have been installed. Indiana Geothermal excavated 2 five foot deep 450 foot long trenches. In the trenches are the pipes that will circulate fluid to help our house heat and cool. It was fun to see how fast the system went in and we also have a core from our basement walls that was drilled out to let the pipe pass through to the basement.
On Saturday, Josh and I planned to go rock hunting around the site. It is a goal of mine to have rocks from around the house for landscaping. I really hoped that we would unearth a huge rock that we could have engraved but we weren’t that fortunate. We did find lots of smaller rocks that will still be fun to use for projects. Armed with shovels and a wheelbarrow, we set off to collect the larger rocks that had been uncovered. We were surprised to see someone at the site with a skid steer working on backfilling the foundation. We told him what we were doing and did our best to stay away from whatever side of the house he was working on and we found quite a large pile of rocks!
The backfilling has been the most visual change we have had since starting. Now we are able to walk up to our porch and back patio instead of balancing along the edge of poured concrete walls. Being able to walk up to our front door might be my favorite thing that has happened since we broke ground.
We also need to issue a retraction from last week’s blog. The missing drone was located by Lee Emmons. It had previously been reported that Mom discovered the hiding spot. Thanks Dad!