Concrete, Steel, and Demolition in My Basement

Things are heating up in my basement now.  Really.  Our outdoor temperatures have risen since I began my basement renovation in early February and I still don’t have heating and cooling down there yet.  So it’s getting a bit warm and sticky down there lately.  But we’re getting closer to having cooling!  Here’s my latest update, in words and video.

First, the video.  To see the four previous video updates, go to the Energy Vanguard YouTube channel.

Now, a bit more about the three things I talked about in the video.

Concrete work

Rule number one in renovation work:  To maximize the amount of money you spend on your house, make sure to cut open the concrete slab.  And do it multiple times to increase the number of times the concrete contractor has to show up.  We’ve had five places in our slab opened up for sewer line replacement, interior perimeter drain replacement, two footings for posts, and moving the bathtub drain.  Ugh!

But—knock on wood—I think we’re done with the concrete now.  Hooray!  And the other good news is that our basement now supports the loads from above much better than it did before.

Pouring a new footing at the edge of the basement, though, meant having to reroute the interior perimeter drain.  That’s what the flat black plastic corrugated pipe you see below is.  It’s just another reminder that every change you make in construction has effects on other parts of what you’re doing…and more often that not, adds cost.  (You may have noticed that drain in the video, too, but I didn’t say anything about it there.)

Below is the new bathtub drain I installed before they came to pour the last of the concrete.  I had to move it to be able to insulate the wall, and it wasn’t a bad idea to replace the old trap either.

Once the framers come back and put in the posts on the new footing, we’ll be done with the structural work.

Window openings

One thing I didn’t say in the video was that the concrete contractor got my heart pumping and my blood pressure elevated when he did what we had told him at least three times NOT to do.  That is, he broke out the front part of the concrete block to put the angle iron in above the window.

In the end, everything’s OK and stronger than before.  But it just wasn’t a good idea to break those blocks out when all we wanted was to remove mortar and slide the angle iron in there beneath the intact concrete blocks.

Wall removal

As I mentioned in the video, this is where phase one of our basement renovation bleeds into phase two a little bit.  Removing the wiring was easy.  Demolishing the wall was easy.  And it went faster than I had intended.

But that was because I made a mistake.  On Sunday evening I was taking the wall apart, but I didn’t want to start the plumbing because it was already 6 o’clock.  “I can just cut this piece of wood that’s in the way of me cutting and resoldering the copper plumbing pipe,” I thought to myself.  So I got out my reciprocating saw.  The piece of wood was right on top of the pipe, and I figured I could cut it easily without cutting into the pipe.

Wrong!  That’s water on the floor in the photo above.  So I had to cut and cap the hot water line going to that sink that evening.  Then Monday evening I worked late, getting more demolition done and removing the hot water line from the wall.

Lagniappe

I’m heading to Louisana soon for my 45th high school reunion, so I’ve got Cajun on the brain, I guess.  Lagniappe, in case you didn’t already know, is a little something extra, a bonus.  When I was growing up in Chauvin in the ’70s, the church (St. Joseph’s) would host a big fair called Lagniappe on the bayou.  So here’s a bit of lagniappe on the blog for you today.

The house was built in 1961, and I think that cabinet with the sink in it was original.  When I tore it apart, I found a nice assortment of lost trinkets.  As you see below, it included a razor blade, poker chips, a mahjong tile, a bazooka shooting little green army man, and few other things.

And a little look forward.  We’re at the early stages of the fun part of this project.  I’ve started putting some of the InSoFast insulation panels on the walls (photo below).  They’re mostly just dry fitted right now, but I’ll attach them with adhesive soon.  And then extend to other wall areas and the floor.

Stay tuned for more as my basement renovation progresses!

 

Allison A. Bailes III, PhD is a speaker, writer, building science consultant, and the founder of Energy Vanguard in Decatur, Georgia.  He has a doctorate in physics and is the author of a bestselling book on building science.  He also writes the Energy Vanguard Blog.  For more updates, you can subscribe to Energy Vanguard’s weekly newsletter and follow him on LinkedIn.

 

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