How Firm a Foundation

Well, my theory about this being a "dense" house is more than supported by the floor which will support the whole thing. There 's so much junk in the floor I wouldn't be surprised to find Jimmy Hoffa in there.

We just had a conference with our builder and Jeff, the guy who is going to do the radiant heat tubing in the floor and the water heating. It will not just be a slab of concrete. There is a layer of gravel through which all the sewer lines and other water lines to the bathroom and kitchen fixtures and then insulation (blue board). On top of the blue board will rest little "chairs" then 2 inches of cement. The little chairs will stick up above the cement, and on their little backs will rest mesh which will support the tubing through which the hot water will course to warm our souls. THEN, there will be another 2 inches of concrete and after that is all done, someone will come by with a concrete router thing and score lines in the concrete and if God is on our side, then the inevitable cracks will follow our man made fault lines and we won't have to avoid our builder should we run into him on the street.

A big part of the discussion was insulation of the sides of the slab. Apparently, like hormonal teenagers, heat will escape through any means necessary and the side of the slab is just as tempting as open window. So, in order to save literally thousands of dollars a year, you have to insulate all around the edge of the slab and this causes aesthetic problems because the insulation is an ugly blue and there is no interior molding to cover it. Therefore, we opted to put the insulation on outside of the slab and will cover it with some sort of masonry material to be decided later. This would please Mr. Wright I think.

The upshot is, that unlike a conventional house with a foundation and then crawl space, everything has to be worked out before we pour the floor. The radiant, slab floor with the proper insulation is key to the whole shebang.

A really nice thing is that everyone is really using Pat's plans that he drew, they are that good, and also, both the builder and Jeff used the model to get a handle on the elevations etc.

I can't wait until the builder lets me use his name.

All of this is in anticipation of our bank loan going through. Nothing we've done so far can't be undone. Everyone at this point is waiting on our loan and then things will get crackin'.

And of course, everytime anyone said anything, I just saw dollar signs where their irises should have been. All very scary.