Some pictures, as I promised

September 22, the forms have been removed.  We have our first free-standing wall!

Preparing for the concrete slab for the house.



September 23, laying insulation underneath the slab.



September 23, end of the day.  All ready for the slab.

September 24, pouring the slab!

September 27, pouring the concrete for the garage walls

For the first time, I can stand on the floor of my house!  Slab is finished!

Tuesday

Personally, today was a shit day.  I'm home on sick leave for the rest of the week, and well, just not happy.  
House-wise, today was awesome!  The house looks totally different today, because my garage walls were installed and they started installing the forms for the exterior cellar walls.
I never really explained the foundation, and I guess now is as good a time as any.  Our house is a bit of a special case, but I'm sure that you, dear readers, already knew this.  Since our house is being built into a hill, it requires a very special foundation in order to counteract the pressures of the hill, from many sides.  The decision was that the exterior walls of the cellar, or is it foundation (?) along the back and the sides will be made of pured concrete.  The walls for the front of the house, namely, my garage, do not need to be so strong, but need to look nice.  So, the walls for my garage were made of pre-fab pieces.  The cool thing about pre-fab parts for a garage?  The walls were up in one day! 

And a view of the forms that are soon-to-be filled, and soon-to-be the complete exeterior walls in the cellar our house!

And there you have it!  This construction site is slowly, but surely, becoming a true home!

Since Tuesday

A lot has happened since Tuesday.  Of course, we're building a house!  We had a small drama when I hurt my knee pretty badly on Tuesday evening. 
But, I don't have the camera here right now, its at my in-laws' house.  So for now, I'll just give a brief discription of each day.
Wednesday- the molds for the first wall were removed, which means we have our first standing wall!  It is the wall in between Joern's garage and the house.  Hooray!  They tried to set-up some more molds for the other garage walls, but there was a problem with steel, I guess they didn't have enough, so there was a lot of waiting on Wednesday.
Thursday-  the preparation for the slab for the house was completed.  Insulation was laid above the stones, and then the thin layer was laid on top, the steel grids were put in place. 
Friday- the concrete slab for the house was poured!  Molds were finalized for the other two walls in Joern's garage, which will be poured on Monday. 

Hopefully, we'll get to my in-laws' house later today to pick up the camera.  I'll post pictures soon!

I looooove our electrician!

We met with our electrician for the first time today.  I guess I was a little surprised when I found out that this was not the guy who kind of has a monopoly on all electrical work in our town, but instead, someone recommended to us by Mr. B.  The "town electrician," turns out to be good at his job, but not very reliable.  He has forced building sites to stop for days while the builders had to wait for electrical work.  Mr. B has worked with this electrician, Mr. Kübler, on a couple of projects, and Mr. B has been really impressed by not only his work, but by his affordability. 
 I didn't realize Mr. Kübler would be at our new house before 4, so I arrived about 15 minutes after he arrived, but at least Joern was there and able to start talking with him.  When I arrived, Mr. Kübler introduced himself, and then said that he and Joern were just talking about smoke detectors and security systems.  As any proud, flag-waving American, smoke detectors were a non-negotiable to me in our new house, and I have been having major discussions with Joern for years about how I would want a security system for our house as well.  He explained that for most of his customers, these are hard-sells for him, I told him my American opinions on both, which made him very happy.
Here is a bullet-list of everything we discussed:
-we will have a 400 watt outlet in Joern's garage, as we will need it to power the pump for the cistern, as well as the need to power Joern's power tools in the future.
-the circuit-breaker box will be located in the entryway along the staircase, an electrician's dream
- we discussed making a "lichtdecke" or illunated ceiling.  This will give us maximum light in our cellar space
  without compromising the terrace.
-we spent a long time discussing the TV, and Mr. Kübler had a fantastic idea!  He worked in a house where
  the fireplace constructor built a special insulated niche for the TV.  We're definately looking into this solution!
-3 pendant lights above the island in the kitchen
-on the top floor, we discussed further recessed lighting in the walk-in closet and the bathroom.
-the suggestion of illuminating a small section of the ceiling in the Master shower with LED lights, this would not only illuminate the shower, but would allow us to put in any type of shower-head, including a rain-shower.
-running LED lights along the top of the staircase
-the alarm will have sensors on all windows that can be accessed from the ground, a motion sensor in the cellar, and a video-speaker system at the door with a recorder
but, by far, the coolest idea:

- put a double 110-volt plug in the kitchen!!   This means I have a dual-voltage kitchen!  I can run all my US appliances in my kitchen without my dumb, boxy, heavy transformer!  I could have cried, or kissed Mr. Kübler, or maybe both!

Well, that's about all with electrics.  Pretty exciting. 

Here's a currrent view of the house, they're preparing the molds for the garage walls!

Not much today

Its Friday.  We've been officially involved in the house-building process for 3 weeks now.  It was the first day that the builders were not working from 7 am to 5 pm.  Really, there wasn't so, so much for them to do today, as they didn't want to walk on the slab too much.  They did remove a lot of the framing for the slab, and tomorrow, we'll probably go take some good pictures.
There is a lot of insulation up, and they did put gravel all around the entire house perimeter.
The guys worked from about 10 to 4.  I don't care.  They work damn hard, I have to say.  They deserve this one day, as long as they don't make it a habit :)

Thank you for listening, Mr. Weather!

Dear Weather,
Thank you so very much for cooperating today!  It was so kind of you to make the decision to keep the rain today, even though you did send by a few threating clouds.  The slab was poured this morning in our garages, and it looks beautiful! 
Thank you so much for your help.
Your friend,
Allison

As I drove to work this morning, I saw the concrete truck in the driveway.  Concrete truck in driveway could only mean one thing- concrete slab!  Joern called me a few seconds later to confirm my suspicion, that indeed the slab for the garages and foyer were being poured!  I have to admit, I am a little sad that I missed it, although seemingly boring, I would have loved to have witnessed the event.  But, it was exciting to come home and see my garage all finished.  By the time I got home, Joern's garage was not only completed, but also covered already. 

The finished garages.

A few pictures from earlier in the day.

Because the garages do not have any more covering over the floor, they were finished with a very smooth finish. 

Once the slabs were finished, they were covered with a plastic cover, and then sprayed with some water.  The cover not only protects the slab while it is curing, but it also keeps moisture in the concrete throughout the drying process.  If the slab dries too quickly, cracks can form really easily.

An open letter to the weather

Dear Weather,
The builders have been working so very hard to prepare the foundation for the slab.  Because you were so indecisive today, raining a little, and then not, the builders didn't want to play games, so they did not pour the slab today.  PLEASE, PLEASE show your good side and let the builders pour our concrete slab tomorrow.  I'm getting a little antsy!

Despite the setbacks with the weather, there was quite a bit of preparation for the slab under the house  that was completed today.  See for yourself!



The end of the day on Tuesday

The middle of the day today.

 Sadly, we didn't take a picture from above of the scene at the end of the day today.  We have rebar covering the entire "H" shaped footing.  Also, on the  left side of the house, quite a bit of insulation was laid on top of the ballast stones and then covered with the plastic covering and stones. 

Hopefully, weather-wise, we'll be good to go tomorrow for the garages' concrete slab!

Preparing for the slab!

It looks like tomorrow, we'll be the proud owners of two concrete floor slabs, one in my garage and the foyer, and the other in Joern's garage.  It is so exciting!

This morning

Later in the day, the garages are covered with steel mesh and are ready for lots and lots of concrete!

Under the concrete is a thin layer of plastic material, under that is a lot (will measure tomorrow) of gravel, under the gravel is another layer of material, and then the ground.  They also put insulation underneath the foyer before covering it. The only non-insulated part of our floor slab will be the garages.

Photo of the day

They builders are getting ready to pour the concrete slab for the garages!

Wow, we had a weekend full of visitors!

We have finally had visitors come by to check out our house!  I guess we could say they were our first "house guests."
Our first visitor was on Friday, when Mr. Petermann , who lives in the neighborhood, came to visit.  He's in his 70s, and has known Joern ever since he was a little boy.  He came and chatted with us a bit about the house, and his experiences with home owning.  A little while later Joern's friend Fabio stopped by with his family.  I guess it was good that we stayed at the house site so long on Friday!

Saturday was also awesome.  A few friends of ours, Heidi and Julie, and their son stopped over for a while.  Joern's friend Georg also stopped by too.  They toured our "house."  It was really fun to be able to explain things in English, instead of passively sitting by listening to Joern explain everything in German.   We even toured one half of the duplex next door. What an excellent afternoon! 

And there you have it.  We've already had guests come to our house.  Two weeks into construction. Hooray!

I finally found an American equivalent!

After months, and months of writing about things I couldn't translate into English, I finally found tons of information on German-type concrete houses built in the US! 
It turns out that we are building an Insulated Concrete Form house.  Even Bob Vila talks about them on his website!  The use of Insulated Concrete Forms as building material seems to be growing in North America.  Insulated Concrete is being touted for it's energy efficiency, resistance to fire and to natural disasters, as well as its ability to retain its strength over time. 
Funny enough, these were the reasons I wanted to go with a concrete house before I even read them.  I liked the feel of concrete homes here, as well as the fact that they are cooler in the summer.  

In my search for building terms, like footer and rebar, which I had heard, but never knew their meaning, I found this webpage as well. I love this page, because it follows the building of an Insulated Concrete Form home in the US.  So exciting!

Well, there you have it.  I know I still haven't updated from Friday, I need to, because there was so much completed on Friday.  If the wait is too excruciating, you can always head over to our Share Site, to see the pictures :)

It seems hard to belive

Two weeks ago today, this is what our building lot looked like:

Here's the same view from today:

Today's status:
Excavation is complete, 6 days ago.  The footers have mostly all been filled, with the exception of the trench running along the north side of the house.  The drainage pipes that will run underneath the house are laid, and covered by ballast stones.  Today, the water connection was attached, and now is that black pipe with the blue pipe sticking out of it.  The electricty was also brought up to the house, and comes out of a pipe next to those wood boards.  The waste water pipes have also been laid, and too are mostly covered by ballast stones.  The majority of the building lot is now covered with a material that acts as a barrier to help keep the ballast stones in place.  This is the white material you can see in the above picture.  Digging began  today for the underground cistern that will be under the driveway.
Over the course of this week, the building site has gone from a big hole in the ground to  a very clear and definite building site!

Our first accident

We're fine.  No one got hurt.  But, the truck that delivered the metal for our cellar walls had a pretty big problem:

That's part of the fuel pump that got jammed into the fuel tank.  Ugh!  The poor truck driver.  Since our street is not yet finished, there is a relatively large incline between the sidewalk and our road.  When the truck driver drove over the this incline, the heavy trailer filled with iron pressed down on the filter, broke it, and pushed it through the fuel tank.

Again, poor truck driver.  When I got home, this was the scene:

Of course, what I found out when I talked to Joern was that this scene remained unchanged for 6 hours today!  We walked down to talk to the truck driver.  He was so nice.  I guess after the incident, he contacted his boss, who contacted the mechanics they work with.  It took the mechanics 4 hours to get to Neckartailfingen, and another 2 hours to put a band-aid  on it, so that the driver could drive home.  The truck driver explained that he will never forget our construction, and will respectfully decline returning to our construction site for further deliveries.  He will recommend that a smaller truck complete further deliveries.  I feel really bad for this poor guy.

In other more successful news, the footers poured in the back and the front.  According to Joern, the trench for the footer in front of our house was deeper than I am tall.  Woah!

The builders also laid out some of the waste water piping:

Grrr, its time to quit working

Today marked yet another day on the site, and made me really sad that I don't get to see all the goings-on.  And, maybe a little bit jealous of Joern, who works 20 feet away from the site.
When I dropped Joern off at his parents' this morning, the excavator operator was busy smoothing down the ballast stones for the crane to sit atop.  Since our ground is kind of uneven anyway, plus the crane is so heavy, it needs extra support, ballast stones were placed underneath the crane (they also will be underneath our house.) 
During the day, the crane that was standing near our friend's new duplex construction, was dismantled and set up right next to our building lot!

Crane as it stood for months in front of our friend's new construction

 The crane being moved to us!

It seems hard to tell, but the crane is now at our lot!

After the crane was settled, which took quite a while, the workers returned to digging out the site.  Some fabric was laid down on top of the areas of the ground that did not need to be further dug out. 

The fabric is a special fabric that helps with the drainage system of the house.

After the fabric was laid, the digging recommenced.  First, two trenches were dug, along the east side of the house and along the north side.  These are the trenches for the footers.  One trench was even filled with concrete already.  These footers evenly dispirse the weight of the house, and needed to be especially deep to counter the force of the hill pushing against them.  The second footer trench will be filled tomorrow.

The trenches were also dug for the waste water pipes, electircity, and the pipes for the water supply.  The trenches are not finished, but here is how we left the site tonight:

The plans

I realized that since my last post with plans, we've made quite a few changes.  Once we started with the blueprints, part of the problem became that they are too large to scan.  We don't have a PDF or anything, so all we've been holding onto were giant pieces of paper.  Plus, we kept making changes.  The plans are now mostly finalized, but I am still not happy with the master bath.

Last week, Joern and I bit the bullet, and bought a new camera, a Cannon EOS 1000D.  It is considered the "beginners level" DSLR camera.  We really love it.  Since we have such a fab new camera, I thought it would be a good test to photograph the plans so we can have our own digital set.  I'm pretty sure I could have done a lot better, but I'm learning. 

So, here you go, the 99% finalized plans. 

This is the cross section.  UG= cellar, EG= first floor, OG= second floor, Bühne = attic.

The stairs to the first floor start in the back of the cellar and come up in the living/dining area.

The stairs to the second floor begin near our back door and go up to the landing across from the children's bath.

The view from the north.  This is the back of our house.

I appologize for this east side being so crazy.  No matter how I try to upload it, dear Blogger keeps uploading it in this direction.  If you turn your computer (best done if on a laptop) you can see the add-on now runs from the kitchen to the edge of the dining room.  That long window is above our kitchen sink.

This is the south-facing side, the street view.  The mini window in the middle is the children's bathroom.

                                        The cellar.  Joern's garage is the large one on the left, and enters into our media
                              room.  My garage has been cut-off, but enters into the foyer.  The big room is the
                              media room.  On the right side will be Joern's fitness room.  We had to combine
                              the bathroom and the mechanical room, because workers needed more room than
                              we had planned in the mechanical room.  Those two rectangles coming off the
                              right side of the house are light vents (Lichschächte) which will allow natural light
                              into the two rooms. 

First floor.  You can see the living room has couches in it, and the dining room has

a table and chairs :)  The fireplace will go in the middle of these two rooms along the wall. 

The kitchen connects to the dining room.  Behind the kitchen is the pantry, where we now have

a utility sink, back door is in the middle of the house, and the powder room is to the left of the staircase.

The guest bedroom (or the office) is off the living room. 

The second floor.  The stairs come out onto a small hallway.  In front of the stairs is the children's bath.

The bathroom has been reworked many times, but now fits both a shower stall and the washer and dryer.

To the right of the bathroom is one bedroom. It is small, but full of light (which will make storage

a challenge in the future.)  The second bedroom is in the rear corner of the house, Joern is considering

making this his office for right now.  To the left of the children's bath is the master suite. 
Mr. B redesigned our bedroom to increase space, and the square in the corner is the chimney.

Our walk-in was made a little smaller, but I think we'll be okay.  Our master bath was a bit of a challenge

too.  We're going to get a normal shaped bathtub.  Joern is sad because he had to give up his

bidet.

Well, there you have it.   The official blueprints for our house.  These prints are locked inside that blue box

on our building lot. 

And, it's a wrap!

Literally.  Day 6 of excavation complete, and the end of the day brought the end of the excavation phase!  We're done.  The ground was smoothed out, all piles of dirt were removed.  The garages and foyer are very clearly lower than the house now.  The corners of the house were marked out with wood, and the walls for my garage were also marked out.  The sides of the hole were also covered with a plastic covering, to help prevent a dangerous situation from arising in case of a mudslide. 

Joern in his garage

Northeast corner of houe.  Standing in the future mechanical room.

The pink lines (pretty hard to make out) mark the placement for the pipes.

My garage.

That box behind the excavator contains the plans for the lot and the house.


And now for the facts.  Excavation took 6 days, 7:00 am to 5 pm daily. 
1,200 cubic meters (42,000 cubic feet) dirt removed by 80 double-trailered trucks.
Sadly, the dirt was brought all over the country, so we won't  be able to visit our dirt.

On Monday, they will begin digging for the pipes that will lay under the house.  I am so shocked and impressed that this giganitc excavation was completed so quickly!  Thank you Mr. Wolfram!!!

Excavation, Day 5

Thursday, or Day 5 on the timeline, was quite an exciting day in our excavation experience.
The walls were made quite smooth and a lot of dirt was removed.  The result was a transformation from a hole in my in-laws' front yard to a very clear area perfect for a house.

The walls were smoothed down.

Day 4 rear corner of Joern's garage                            Day 5, rear corner of Joern's garage

And most excitingly, the entrance to the driveway was brought down to the level of the street!  Meaning, once the excavator moves, we could drive into our driveway!

Photos from day 2 (left) and day 5 (right).  The entrance to the driveway remained 3 feet above the street from day 2 to the afternoon of day 5.

Mr. Wolfram (the operator of the excavator,) and another driver also measured out the ground ensuring that it was level. 

As they checked, they marked areas that needed a little extra dirt, or digging, to ensure that the entire building lot was indeed level.

In other news, Mr. B also stopped by today, wearing his two hats, architect and project manager.  He dropped off the official, completed plans.  Mr. B also called the plumber, Mr. Haag, to meet with Joern at the building lot. Sadly, I wasn't there to meet with Mr. B and Mr. Haag, but Joern was. They discussed the placement of the pipes underneath the house, which were to be marked out the next day. They decided against solar panels, because the air pump is very efficient, and because we have a special situation with solar panels and our low-pitched roof. Also because when we would need the solar panels to help support the warm water (in the snowy,cold winter,) the solar panels are often covered with snow, or there is not enough sunlight to support the solar panels. Joern also gave Mr. Haag the plans from Joern's cousin, the structural engineer.  It turns out that the air pump Mr. Haag had planned will be at its limits for our house size.  So now, its back to the drawing board, Mr. Haag will offer a few options to make up for this problem.  They also decided that we will indeed tie the fireplace into the hot water system, this way, we will use the fireplace to help support the production of hot water on chilly winter days.  This does mean that will have to be a little more serious in our search for a fireplace, but that doesn't really bother me at all.