It is fair to say that I had a weak grasp on exactly what would be entailed in preparing the site for the foundation to be poured. I'm thinking, ok so... the excavator has already done 3 weeks of work bringing the area up to grade, building a retaining wall and leveling everything to within about a 2 inch tolerance, how much more can there be to do? Well it turns out that the gravel and course rock used to level the site royally sucks to dig in so you have to make a gigantic sand box and build on that. How much sand you ask? Say about 100 cubic yards of the stuff.
Here is David, my Carthage, ME buddy/coworker after helping me pick axe through some gravel.
After I pushed all the sand around with the tractor, rakes and shovels I belatedly realize that I have pushed it out too far and it is unpleasant to take out yards of sand that you have already added. After a week of sand moving we leveled the site off with a Wacker! (Vibrating tamper that is basically the worlds slowest self-propelled lawn mower and about 3 times as heavy). Sadly I didn't take a picture of this thing but believe me when I say it is pretty unremarkable.
With the sand down we broke out our trusty laser transit (Thanks Tom!) and set up some 2x12 forms and leveled 'em off. With the forms in place we put down our insulation, 6 mil polyethylene and some wire mesh.
Another week of work with XPS insulation, mesh, rebar, plastic and radiant floor piping and we were ready to go. Here you can see the radian tubing, mesh and some of the plumber's handiwork with the sub-slab plumbing.
We pour the concrete on Wednesday morning!
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