Basement Concrete Poured
September 22th, 2008 - Holhard poured our basement concrete on Friday, the 12th, before the weekend's record breaking rain-fall. They didn't pour the garage, front, and back porches that Friday because the soil needed to be wet down and compacted in those areas. The basement cured for about 6 hours before we got heavy rains.
No electricity on site meant no sump-pump operation and by Sunday we had 35 inches of standing water in the basement.
We spent Monday and Tuesday (15th and 16th) emptying out more than 20000 gallons of water, which believe it or not helped fast-cure the basement concrete - it's an endothermic thing where the water keeps the concrete surface from over-heating.
The electricians came back on Friday (the 19th)and by Monday (the 22nd) had pretty much finished their work on the main floor and 2nd floor. They'll finish in the basement this week, I believe.
The fire-saftey team has run all the sprinkler pvc on the main-floor and 2nd floor and have most of the copper runs in the basement. They are close to complete as well.
We also trenched the backyard on Friday the 19th, and laid down power and phone lines. ComEd will come by at their leisure and connect us to the pole at the back of our yard.
Note -- ComEd charges $1015 dollars for the lineman to come out and wire up our own wire to their pole! It cost me $500 for 100 feet of 3-wire power cable and a phone cable. I also payed $175 dollars for Rental Max to drop off a walk-behind trencher for 4-hours.
It's significantly cheaper to trench and lay your own power / phone lines: ComEd wanted an additional $1300 bucks for that portion - so we saved a few hundred.
We hope to get the garage and porches poured this week -- I'll take some pictures once we have electricity on-site and can keep the basement dry.
On another front: We opened an account at Lowes and bought $1500 worth of porcelain tiles (about 500 sf). New accounts get 10% off their first purchase -- it is worth using the store credit card and then paying everything off at the end of the month to get that discount.
We trotted over to Home Depot and orderd $5300 worth of Woodmark Tawny Oak cabinetry and $2400 worth of DuPont Corian solid surface counter top. Again, we opened a credit account with the store and got an additional 10% off (you have to ask for them to match the Lowes account discount).
We of course did due dilligence on our tile, cabinetry, and counter purchases comparing prices among 4 alternative suppliers over the preceding month. But once we pulled the trigger it was all done in a few hours -- and whew, I'm glad that decision is behind us.