We completed the footers last week. The site was fairly dry and everything went well. However, it rained again this weekend and we have a big mud hole – again, as you can see in the final photo.
In order to save money and make sure we have minimal waste, we are attempting to handle site cleanup on our own. On Friday afternoon, Jeff did the first cleanup of the worksite. It is our goal to achieve zero construction waste to a landfill during the build. In a house like ours – built using traditional methods – total construction waste would be between 5 and 12 tons. The theme of this will be reduce, reuse and recycle. We will move 55 gallon drums onto the site for scrape steel (bent nails, small pieces of rebar etc), plastic and aluminum. We will break down all cardboard boxes for recycle. Jeff plans on making all his own shims for windows and doors from the scrap pieces of wood. Larger pieces of scrap wood will be sorted and available for construction. The broken clay tile from the roof, access scrap wood, and scrape sheetrock will be turned into mulch and used as fill material around the home during final grading.
Five concrete loads later the foundation is poured.
Monday February 22, 2009. It rained on Saturday and Sunday. I’ll be another tough week.
