Once the plumbing was settled in, Doug went to work on his forte - slangin’ concrete. The basement floor was broken up into two pours so as to be more manageable in the hot weather. Even though the really hot weather hasn’t set in yet when you are in the basement with the highly reflective walls it is a bit like an oven. When concrete is hot it sets a lot more quickly making it harder to work with.
To help offset the rapid drying time, they started the pour later in the afternoon, and added some plasticizer to the concrete that makes it more pliable for a longer period of time.
The floor under the back bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen was poured first, with the second half of the floor coming a few days later. I had never seen the big troweling tool before - it looks like a fan with the blades facing down, used to smooth the surface as it dries. A coat of sealant was applied shortly after to protect the floor from construction damage as much as possible.
We aren’t planning to finish the basement anytime soon so are not overly concerned about the floor, but given our affinity for raw concrete, we actually quite liked the look of it.
Once the floor had set, we had a giant steel I-beam delivered to span across the long side of the house. Doug and my Brother-In-Law Matt, who is a structural engineer, calculated the load of the floor and potential weight of all the people that could reasonably be expected to be standing upon it given our relative popularity and proximity to centers of population, and determined that one post would be sufficient.
The post itself is a well casing filled with, you guessed it…concrete. Most of the pictures below show the post and beam being put into place. I don’t have all the specifics of how it went up, but I know that Special K and a lot of slow and deliberate movements played a role. The subject of the email we got the next day was ‘1100 lbs…and no one was hurt!’
Once the post and beam were in place, the joists were spanned from the front to the back of the basement. Those facing Nudura walls have a step back where they get narrower on the inside, and that forms a small shelf for the floor joists to sit on.
The next step is to start putting in the subfloor, and shortly thereafter we will start with the second course of Nudura blocks on up to the roofline.
