Underslab Insulation - Radiant Tubing

In true Washington fashion the rain melted all the snow, so the snow was only around for a few weeks. With the snow gone, we dug the footings for the load-bearing walls, installed the underslab insulation and stapled down the radiant tubing. Now we are ready for the concrete!

2 Feet of Snow

After the sand was in and we compacted it, the plumbers did the groundwork plumbing. The day after the plumbers were finished, it snowed. Then it kept on snowing and we ended up with 2 feet of snow. Since the ground work wasn't buried because it needed to be inspected, we had to insulate the pipes with pipe warmers and insulation so that the water in the pipes wouldn't freeze and ruin the pipes. That was alot of fun.

Sand, Sand and More Sand

After we were finished with the footings and foundation, we had between one and two feet of space we needed to fill to raise the level of the ground before we poured the basement slab. With the location, there was no way to back a dump truck up and dump in it, so we had to "throw" in sand. It was pretty crazy. They load up the sand at the quarry in their truck that has a conveyor belt at the end. Then they just run the belt at a high speed and it throws it where you want it (for the most part . . . we had a lot of sand that didn't quite make it in the hole). The operator just stands there with his remote control and moves the conveyor belt and adjusts the speed to fill in different areas. Much easier than trying to wheelbarrow it, especially since it took 8 loads to fill!