Here it is. The fully prepped basement. We are ready to pour cement starting this morning. The picture above details what it looks like to have the radiant tubing fastened to the wire mesh and ready to have cement poured over it. All that is left to do this morning before they pour the cement is to put the angled PVC on the edge of the foundation to ensure any water coming through the foundation runs into the drain tile.

You can see here that the hosing is clipped to the wire mesh that was put down. The clips are every few feet or so, and ensure that the tubing doesnt get moved out of place as they put the heavy loads of concrete down on top of it. Whats interesting is that each set of tubes (there are two sets) are isolated solid systems. There is no coupling or joints in this hosing. They are closed loops. This is done to ensure no possibility of leaks inside the foundation as that would not be good. It took the HVAC guy's the majority of the day to lay down the tubing so we could start today.

This is a closeup of the insulation thats below the radiant tubing and the cement will be poured on. As I said before, this is a newer product, so we are really on the leading edge of fully utilizing this technology from a "green" standpoint. We are hoping this is going to keep us from using the furnace in the lower levels of the house as a result of the warmth the floor should create for our home - this should drive long term energy savings as well (crossing fingers).

Yup, this is up for the work they are doing on the water service for our house. This is a a new "requirement" from the city on the water service upgrade. The city deemed that we had too many fixtures requiring water, so we had to upgrade the size of the supply line to the house from the city's water main. In this case, the location of the main servicing our house actually runs on the other side of the street. In the past this would have been taken care of by digging a hole on the other side of the street, boring under the street from that location to my yard, then digging a commensurate hole in our yard to connect them with the new 1.5 inch in diameter (currently .75") pipe. Well....the city no longer trusts that this is being done properly, so they require that they have full visibility of the pipe from connection of the water main, to the property's foundation wall. This means......

Ripping a monster trench right across the street. Yesterday, the plumbing company cut the street, jackhammered out the pavement and lower layers of support, and dug out all of the dirt. The water line is actually just a foot this way -> so they access it from this side, run a new pipe to the connection, and the city comes out to "tap" the main line for them as they are the only ones allowed to access the water main (makes sense to me). Once this is done, they plumbing company will dig a trench all the way to the house (under the city sidewalk) and to the foundation line where they will bring it into the house. Once they have done this, the city will come back out to inspect the entire line to ensure its done properly and the plumbing company can close everything up.

It was quite nice yesterday at lunch when I came home and the street was closed off....no traffic made things very quiet and I felt like we had the street to ourselves while they were working on the water line. Very nice change of pace for our semi-busy street.