After taking a much needed getaway to Fairfield Glade with the Cook family, it was back to business! Dwayne was concerned about the weight of the concrete floor shifting the hollow ICF wall, so he decided it was best to pour about a foot or so of concrete into the back wall before pouring the basement floor. The driver was great and let the kids go up on the truck to take a peek. You know how it is with us homeschoolers- everything is a field trip!!!! The view in this picture reminds us why we love our property!

Overview

An overview of the basement with a good deal of radiant tubing down. Dwayne painted lines where the walls will go to divide up the radiant zones, so now we (I) have a better picture of what size the rooms will be! The u-shaped spot is the staircase and the area beyond it is the landing/foyer at the bottom of the steps.

More radiant floor progress!

Jeff and Frank came out to help with the radiant floor- Dwayne was a little smarter today and waited to until 7pm to start working, although it hadn't cooled down a whole lot!

Just hanging around!

Jonathan found a way to relax and take it easy by hanging in the pex tubing roll-looks like he also found Dwayne's stash of Oreo's!

Proof that the kids do help some! And me in my element of supervision and direction!










Long time friend, Jeff Rogers, was a BIG help today! We made great progress, despite the heat and lack of experience!













Hunny, if you keep taking pictures, you're eventually going to get ALL 3 of us in our plumbers pose!

After weeks of research and discussions, and help from my radiant floor consultant, Charlie Jones, I came up with a plan this morning and got started today at 3:00. Yes I picked the hotest part of a hot day to layout a reflective tarp and begin laying out Pex tubing!




Interesting view of Jacob helping out. Yes, he was a good helper today! Very interested in the process. He will benefit from this experience!








Cool new hat! "A la Kelly Settle!" Still didn't keep me cool. Boy was it hot today!














A good view of the basement rec room. The tubing is laying out well!











My kids don't help a lot, but they sure provide lots of entertainment!

You would think that with all of the rain we had this week, we would have had a chance to catch up on this blog! I'll try to give a quick rundown of what has happened in the last week and a half.




As most of you know by now, Dwayne installed all of the rough plumbing in the basement. Here is a picture of the pipes after they have covered back over with gravel.









After a lot of red tape, we decided to forego the plumbing inspection- a benefit (?) of being farmstead exempt. Dwayne pressure tested all of the pipes and the system checked out perfectly. Charlie is stubbing up the main drain from the house in preparation for the pressure test.







Dwayne and Charlie rolling out the Insultarp. This tarp will provide insulation under the basement slab and well as help reflect the heat upward from the radiant floor tubing.








Wire mesh goes down over the tarp. This helped to hold the tarp down and keep it from blowing away during the storms we have had this week. We will also attach the radiant floor tubing to the wire mesh before the basement slab is poured.

Basement drain pipes

An overview of the basement drain pipes. Because we are doing this ourselves, we putting as much into the slab as we possibly can. Frank and Vivian came back out on Sunday night to help with the pipe sloping and gluing.

Our plumbing crew (otherwise read AWESOME friends!)

At the time of the last posting, we were ready for the plumber to install our rough-in plumbing. Since the plumber we were planning on using has yet to call us back, we decided to proceed with something else. After meeting with another possible plumber, we have decided that we (ie Dwayne) will install our own plumbing. The other plumber has agreed to tutor Dwayne along the project, so he started right away. This involved digging trenches anywhere we needed pipes to go. (Yes, the gravel that we had just leveled out!) So Saturday, some of our most awesome friends showed up to help dig trenches. Here, Frank, Vivian and Kelly are finishing up the trenches. Dennis Raleigh snuck out before I could get a picture of him.