Week two of construction has come to a close and we already have the footers and foundation walls finished. Next week will be prep and pouring of the slabs. Check out the video and image recaps below.
100K House Construction Video - Week 2
Week 2 Construction Photos
In week two we went from poured footers to formed foundation walls to final, cured foundation walls. We even passed another building inspection from the city. Next week the other trades will get their first shot at the site as we prep for the slabs and pour them by the end of the week.
5 comments ↓
what, no basement ???
cheapest space in a house !
big mistake . for cost savings.
Well, that’s the conventional wisdom all right…
Look, Tino’s down 3-4 feet anyway, and placing forms anyway… why couldn’t you just do another 4 feet for a basement?
Part of the reason is that the building next door has to be shored up. There’s $5k. You have to haul and dump a LOT of dirt. Another $5k. Goodbye $100k goal. Chad probably knows about a few more costs.
Chad,
I wonder, did precast foundations get looked at? Like Superior Walls?
We actually grappled with the basement issue in our very first feasibility meeting in our second post - http://100khouse.com/2007/11/07/feasibility-meeting/
The bottom line is that a basement would cost us an extra $20K or so and it would not be livable space. It blows our budget immediately and also does not allow us to use radiant heating as we are in the current design.
We could make the basement the ground floor and have the house sitting half a dozen feet lower, but this would still add cost in the end and was not direction that ISA wanted to head on this house at this point for the design.
I’m confident we made the right choice and including a full basement would have been a “big mistake” given the goals of the project. There are many things that seem automatic in a home design to many, but when faced with a $100K construction goal you are quickly forced to take a completely different approach in the design phase.
Kevin - Great analysis, thanks.
Rob - We did look a bit at Superior walls, but they are not used above grade so as soon as we decided on no basement, there was not point to pursue further.
We are keeping very open mind about future layouts and systems that will reduce cost while improving energy efficiency. This especially goes for the foundation, wall and roof systems.
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