Living in a polar vortex

It was 8 degrees this morning when I woke up.  We are experiencing negative zero wind chills.  It is not only unusually cold for November (they are predicting a record low temperature for Chicago today) this is cold for January!

My addition is a shell waiting for the plumber, the electrician, and the mechanical contractor to begin their phase of the work.  However, with no windows, no insulation and no way to heat what is essentially a bus stop structure, it probably goes without saying, there is nobody working here today. We are now hoping for 40 degree days and windows to continue construction.  Poor Steve will be installing windows in less than ideal conditions, but I have faith in him, he has done this for me before in the dead of winter on another project.

Last Thursday, as promised, Bill showed up with his crew and the concrete truck!

First Pour

Thursday was the first pour.  The upper levels of the garage went in first: The level at the gas curb and the step down into the storage room.

Bill had all the garage openings (remember, we have no doors or windows!) sealed with thick plastic and left the gas-powered heater running overnight.

Friday they all returned to pour the floors:

Day 2 Garage concrete pour.

Day 2 Garage Floor

They work very quickly moving the concrete down the chute and across the floor.  Using what looks like a giant metal crochet hook, they pull the rebar mesh up into the middle of the concrete.  I am amazed at how fast the concrete sets up!  I didn’t time it, I wish I had, but it wasn’t too long before all the concrete was placed where it belonged.  Less than an hour? The finishing process took much longer!

Finishing the garage floor

Two men spent several hours leveling the floor. With what looks like long shallow boxes, the men rest their knees on these floats, and look like skaters gliding across the wet concrete floor.  I really should have made a video of this; they move quite quickly and gracefully.  Maybe the next (and last) pour I will remember to do this!  With hand floats, they smooth out the top layer of the concrete.  They make several passes over the span making the floor incrementally smoother each pass as the concrete continues to set up.  A shout out to Bill:  Your crew is excellent.  Please feel free to make any comments to correct or embellish what I have posted!

I was wrong when I said I did not have anybody show up yesterday to work. Bill returned to check on how the concrete was curing.  He left the heater and fans blowing over the weekend to try to maintain that 40 degrees needed to create a strong product.  Concrete takes 28 days to fully cure.  The heater and the fan are still on as today we will not get out of the teens for a high temperature.

Bill and I had to chance to chat yesterday.  He is not a snow bird migrating to warmer climates when concrete demand slows down in the winter.  He has indoor jobs.  But most fascinating to me, he creates concrete countertops.  He has figured out the perfect mix to get the colors just right.  He fabricates them in his shop, which allows clients to have special designs or materials embedded in the finished surface.  I am planning a field trip to his shop sometime this winter to watch the artistic side of Bill!

I ventured out in the cold this morning to check on our finished garage. The plastic tent and the heater are working.  It is warm out there…its all relative, it is above freezing.

New garage floor

The view from the door to the mudroom.

Finished garage floor

I am standing at the garage door, looking toward the back of the space. There will be a wall across the upper level enclosing the steel column, separating car parking from storage. Upper left view in this photo will be yard & tool storage.  On the right will be what I call my storage room.  It will have my business supplies as well as the boxes with the seasonal decorating, the coolers, the Costco large quantity storage, and my yoga room.  John has claimed this space as his music room.  He envisions his drum and keyboard set up permanently with extra room for his band to practice. We’ll see how it goes.  There will be a wall between the two spaces in the back.

The view across the garage

What I love about this space, is how wide open it is!  How often do any of us get a chance to see a completely clean garage?  There are no oil stains on the floor. There are no mystery boxes or broken tools.  We can’t even park our cars in here, yet, until the concrete is completely cured.  I may frame this and leave it posted on one of the walls to remind us what the garage used to look like before we moved with all the stuff that these spaces were intended for!

Waiting the first Polar Vortex of the season!

It has been rather quiet here since my last post.  I have enjoyed the slower pace and I have been able to be absorbed in my three other projects that are under construction.  However, watching today’s weather forecast of impending doom, I am a little panicked about how my house is not ready for winter!

The last three weeks in our upper midwest end of construction season has been a flurry of activity as trades that supply and build exterior finishes are scrambling to button up their piece of the pie before they are forced to settle in for their long winter nap.  Which partially explains my own slow-down.  Some of the subs that are slated to work on my project are finishing up projects they have already started.  Another huge factor is the concrete shortage in Illinois.  The Illinois Department of Transportation has been very busy this construction season (we only have two seasons in Illinois, the second is the winter season). We are getting beautiful new and improved highways.  I am very supportive of infrastructure improvements, but this massive project has slowed down other concrete work around the state, including my own project!

However, we have experienced progress over the past two weeks:

Bill wrapped up the steps and front walk…

Bill hard at work!

Bill and his crew do work really hard to make their project perfect.  I caught them waiting for the delivery of concrete.

The PVC pipe weaving through the form work will house low-voltage wires for the landscape lights along the driveway and provide lights in the face of the steps.

Getting the concrete where it belongs.

Now watching the third pour on our job site I have discovered that just getting the concrete down the chute is hard work.  They have to control how fast and how much is poured into the forms.  I also discovered that the wire mesh used in the large slabs is just laid into place before the pour.  So how does that mesh end up in the middle of the concrete if it is laying on the ground while concrete lands on top of it?  The crew don their tall rubber boots and wade into the concrete during the pour and pull it up with their hands through the first couple  inches of concrete.  It then settles where it was pulled to and stays put as the rest of the concrete is poured over it.  Apparently the fresh concrete has more structure than thick oatmeal…who knew?

The reinforcing wire mesh pulled into place.

And finally, the perfect finish!

New steps with holes for future low voltage step lights

A new sidewalk!

The curve is perfect!  I have never been so excited about a sidewalk before!  Notice the finished retaining wall on both sides of the steps.

View from the front porch

This is such a huge improvement from the cracking and heaving sidewalk we had learned to dislike immensely!

We have seen Bill on a few more occasions in the past two weeks.  They came to grade the garage floor and to build the forms for our new concrete floor!

More gravel brought into the garage

Now I know if I ever need to, I can store a skidsteer in my garage!

forms are built, vapor barrier laid and wire mesh put into place

There are several levels in the garage at 6″ intervals:  The lowest level at the door to the mudroom in the existing structure, 12″ up to a ‘gas curb’ (required by code to keep any spills from entering a living space) then 6″ down to the high point of the garage floor that slopes toward the garage door where it hits the grade at the corners of the new garage.

They finished up over a week ago, only to be told they couldn’t have concrete until next Thursday!

This gave my HVAC contractor plenty of time to get his flexible plastic tubes laid in the garage to be embedded in the concrete.

Pex in the floor

We are heating the garage floor with a hot water radiant system using the new boiler to supply heat.  This will help keep the new rooms over the garage warmer in the winter.  It also allowed us to reuse the existing foundation to support half the  load of the new addition.  When we lowered the elevation of the garage floor, the existing footing was no longer 42″ below grade.  This is not a problem as long as the foundation is not exposed to frost.  If the garage had not been heated, we would have been required to dig a new foundation wall inside the new garage.  Weighing the two options….new foundation or heated floor….we chose heated floor!

Monday was a beautiful November day, sunny and a high of 60!  The weather has turned as ugly as the future cast weather map!  Yesterday’s high was at 7 a.m. and fell steadily the rest of the day.  Today we have already hit our high of 32 degrees.  Tonight the low will be 21.  Tomorrow we are scheduled for our concrete delivery, the high will again not go above freezing.  The weather data is telling us that this January-like cold spell will last for two weeks.  Concrete cannot freeze during the first few days of the curing process.  The ambient air temperature needs to be above 40 degrees.  Bill tells us if we can maintain a 40 degree temperature, then he will go ahead and pour.  That cylindrical black thing in the garage is a powerful  space heater tied into my natural gas line that Steve hooked up this morning.  Bill will arrive tomorrow morning to tent the garage to keep the heat in.  I will continue to trust that he knows what he is doing. He wouldn’t still be in business otherwise!