Day 39: Wall lift #3

We were ready for the final wall lift after our preparations last Thursday. Pacific Coast Concrete Pumping and Las Anamas Concrete showed up mid morning. Joshua, Justin, Marty and Trevor filled, consolidated, managed the hose and cleaned up - repeated for about 100 cores.

Four seats like the one shown below for a pair of curved glulam beams were positioned and leveled.

Joshua and Justin finished the porch slab.

A pair of porch post brackets like the one shown below were pushed into the slab and leveled.

We cast the year and an oak leaf near one of the porch slab corners.

There was a bit of concrete left over. Joshua made forms with some APEX block cutoffs, and we cast 3 simple pavers in place on the ground.

Joshua did the finishing work on the porch slab. Here is a pic of the completed slab at the end of day 39.

We had a successful final wall lift with no blowouts. The walls are up, and all the concrete work is complete. The home looks deceivingly more complete than it really is. Thanks for reading. Feel free to leave a comment.

Day 35: Wall lift #2

We did some final preparations for wall lift #2 in the morning.

• Positioned a seat for a porch roof beam.
• Hung a pressure treated ledger for the loft from the east wall.
• Finished placing all vertical rebar.
• Placed J-bolt supports for the utility room north wall top plate.
• Filled any gaps larger than 3/8 inch in the walls and around window bucks with closed cell spray foam to prevent grout from leaking out during the pour.
• Added a few more metal bands around ledgers to keep them snug against the wall during the pour.

Pacific Coast Concrete Pumping and Las Anamas Concrete showed up after lunch.

The calm before the pour.

Justin and Marty getting ready for the hose.

Joshua, Justin, Marty and Trevor filled, consolidated, managed the hose and cleaned up - repeated for about 100 cores.

Raphael, doubling as Integral Construction staff photographer, was busy shooting photos.

I got to fill a few cells in the utility room.

We had another successful pour with no blowouts. Thanks for reading. I enjoy your comments.

Day 28: Pouring the first wall lift

Las Animas Concrete and Pacific Coast Concrete Pumping were back again today. This time concrete grout was pumped to fill the network of horizontal and vertical cells in the APEX blocks. The grout is inspected for slump to be sure it is not too thin or too thick. Here is a vid of Mark, the inspector from PSI, performing the slump test.

We passed with a slump of 8 inches, the thinnest mix allowed per structural engineering. A thin mix is desirable because it penetrates hard to reach areas more easily than a thick mix. Mark verified proper rebar placement before pumping. He also verified that grout filled the cells by poking a ¼” diameter rod through the APEX block skin at the bottom course. The rod came out wet with concrete indicating proper fill. Finally, Mark took samples of the grout which will be tested for compressive strength over the next several weeks.

Here is a pic of the pumping crew in action: from left to right, Trevor, Mark, Georg, Todd, Joshua & Justin.

The tasks were:

• Hold the hose over a cell with minimum grout spillage while concrete is shooting out at about 3 feet per second.
• Move the vertical rebars up and down in the cells to help consolidate the grout.
• Clean any excess grout off the top of the blocks.
• Center the vertical rebar in the cell after consolidation.
• Repeat for 100 cells.

Stapling plugs after filling cells under the window openings.


Marty strikes a pose in front of some extra grout used as fill against the east wall. This grout will help facilitate water drainage at this underground wall.

A beam support bracket set in place.

Rafael has a little fun while monitoring the hose.

We finished in just a few hours with no blowouts. We have the rest of the afternoon off, wohoo!

Pastel Green comment for today:
The Portland cement ingredient in concrete has high embodied energy which typically classifies a product as non-green. However, the APEX block cells minimize the amount of concrete needed to make an acceptable structure compared to a typical Insulated Concrete Form (ICF). Additionally, the house is expected to last hundreds of years making the use of concrete more tolerable from a life cycle analysis standpoint.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to leave a comment.

Day 22: Pouring the concrete slab

I worked late yesterday (Tuesday) preparing for the slab pour, so I did not post. Some of the tasks completed Tuesday were:

• Completed routing of the remaining 4 PEX heating circuits.
• Pressurized the PEX heating tubing to 70 psi to identify a failure if one occurs before or during the pour
• Built wooden supports for the corners and window openings to prevent them from distorting outward when the concrete is poured
• Built a variety of wooden forms to create 1) a concrete curb detail around the shower, 2) notches in the door openings for the doors to seat into and 3) a depression for a tile mosaic art piece in front of the sliding glass door
• Photographed, measured and sketched all conduits and tubes that are under locations where fasteners may be anchored into the slab, i.e. interior walls and kitchen cabinets.

Here is a picture from the end of Tuesday.

On Wednesday, the slab was poured. The folks from Diamond D Concrete, Las Animas Concrete and Pacific Coast Concrete Pumping showed up early. Diamond D used a laser level to create a line around the inside of the home that represented the finish height of the slab. I am going to let pics and vids do most of the talking. In the following vid you can see concrete being pumped in the foreground and application of a rough screed in the background.

A perforated roller screed is then used to push down the larger aggregate and leave smooth textured concrete on top (called cream).

The cream surface is then finish screed by hand.

The surface is then rough troweled by hand.

A power screed is then run over the surface.

The guys then worked the surface further twice more with hand trowels to get the finish I desired – not too rough and not too smooth…just right. The guys really did a great job! All of the hard work and preparation from the past several weeks paid off. The day went by with few troubles. I’ll close with a pic from the East at the end of the day.

Green comment for today:
Consider concrete as your finished floor. Less material is required to stain the concrete than to cover it with carpeting or wood. The results of stained finish floors are limited only by your imagination - check out Diamond D's gallery.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to leave a comment.