Planning For Radiant Floor Heat

Morning:

We arrived at site mid morning. The concrete crew continued to set up forms for stem wall. Later, Garret set up a form for the conduit footer gap that will be poured when the walls are poured.

Foundation Wall Forms:

Living Room and Master Bedrooms	Radient Heat Buck Out
Conduits For Circuit Breaker Panel	Sewer Conduit In Finished Wall
Garage And House Center Note footer form below conduit	Breakfast Nook, Kennel Room, Office, and Garage
Foundation Wall Forms Detail

Afternoon:

Doug Felton, of the Plumbing Connection, arrived. He and Garret set up a buck out for the radiant heating connections in the back garage wall and installed conduit for the sewer in the dining room wall. After discussions with Doug, Gary & Lani selected propane for the energy source to heat the house. The system they are designing for us has an 80 gallon holding tank for domestic hot water. Coils in the tank transfer heat to the sealed radiant heat tubes (4000 feet, almost a mile of them) in the concrete slab. We also discussed the number and location of zones with Doug who gave us an overview and said that Bret, his radiant heat expert, would discuss the details at length with us. Propane heat exchangers are very efficient when compared BTU to BTU. Response time is much quicker than electric, requiring only hours to get our system up from a cold state rather than days. Propane will fuel the domestic hot water, radiant floor heat, the range cook top, a gas grill, and a backup 10 KW generator.

Propane is considered a green fuel for the environment but is not a renewable fuel. Click on this paragraph for a brief description of the green aspects of Propane.

Building The Foundation Wall Forms

Morning:

Garret called to tell us they misread the location of the circuit breaker panel and had mistakenly left an open space in the footer along the east side of garage wall. The circuit breaker panel should be on the back wall of the garage. They jack hammered the footer in the back garage wall to provide a gap for conduit installation. They will re-pour both sections of the footer when they pour the stem wall.

Correct placement for Conduits

Afternoon:

Lani and Gary arrived at the site as electricians were leaving. The electricians had installed the conduit in the back wall of garage. The concrete crew began setting up the two-foot high stem wall forms.

Conduits Installed

Initial Foundation Wall Form Panels

Putting Up The Forms

Pouring The Footer

Morning:

Today was the big concrete pour day. The concrete crew from Tom Wood Concrete, Tommy, Willson, and Anthony, finished the footer forms, adding two rows of reenforcing bars between the two boards of the footers

The completed forms:

Looking west along the south side of the house	Looking south along the east end of the house
Footer form detail showing the bent and positioned rebar

Angeles Concrete Cement And Slurry Pumping Trucks On Site Ready Go:

At about 10 AM, Angeles Concrete arrived on scene and set up a large pumping truck. The tall boom was able to reach all areas of the footer. It took two trucks to bring the concrete needed. There was a point when the pumping nozzle became clogged because the second load of concrete was too thick. After getting the nozzle unclogged workers ran the concrete back into the mixing truck adding in more water to get it flowing again, and then switched to a different, more flexible, tube nozzle.

Afternoon:

The whole crew worked in unison with Tommy positioning the nozzle and directing the flow of slurry, Anthony following to scrape away excess concrete, ensure all voids were filled, and remove the horizontal rebar support wires, and Wilson completing the process by smoothing the surface and placing the required vertical rebar pieces.

The following video compresses the entire 4 hour event from start to finish into 9 minutes:

Finishing The Footer Forms

All Day:

We arrived at the building site to find the concrete crew setting up the inner boards for the foundation’s 16-inch footer forms. The inner boards are going up easily since they are aligned to the meticulously positioned outer boards. The original schedule had the pouring set for today, but, because of the measurement delays, that will happen tomorrow.

Footer Forms With The Inner Boards Added:

Dog Kennel Room, Looking South	Master Bedrooms, Looking Southeast
Front Of The House, looking East	Art Studio, Looking Southwest