Go Boston! - An Update of New House Construction: Foundation

Before opening the subject of this blog, I want to cite a comment about today’s tragedy:

“When tragedies strike, heroes rise to meet the challenge: the first responders seen sprinting toward the blast site, the runners who changed course to run to local hospitals to donate blood, and the fine citizens of Boston who at once opened their homes to marathoners in need of a place to stay. When we come together, we cannot be brought down."  

 -    Actor George Takei of Star Trek

Go Boston!

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March 2013 is a snowy month. The past winter was so mild, and Mother Nature finally decided to dump some snow to New England. And it all happened in March; that efficiently slowed down the construction of foundation of the house.

 

                                                               Foundation Structure

Foundation is the base of a house. The cartoon above shows its general structure. The first step of foundation is digging the trench for footing. In our case, we have a basement and it sits on a big ledge. Our builders actually blasted the stone underground and dig out foundation hole.  

 

The site before digging

 

 

                                                         Preparing for footings

 

 It is hard to see with dirty removed but you can still see some stone from blasting in above photo.

 

The photo below shows the footing has been in place. Then we got a good size of snow. 

 

Installed Footing

 

                                                                   Preparing for fill the wall
 

                                                           Foundation Wall

 

Building a house is truly a tough job. Our builder has been working very hard. The wall was installed Mar 25th.

 

                                                                   Tar Coating

 

                                                             Basement backfilled

Finally, after much delay due to whether. The basement is finally ready.

In case you are wondering, the last photo is viewing the future garage.

In today's real estate market, builder tends to sell large sqft house. From the foundation process, you may understand now. The cost of both material and labor going to foundation is significant. However, a slight increased size of foundation, e.g. a few feet in width and length, builder can easily put several hundred sqft to house without incurring much foundation cost. So in general, a large house is cost effective for builder to make more profit.