Stage 2 of the Basement Floor

This is the state of the basement floor as of this morning. Yesterday, the insulation and rolled mesh were put down covering the floor. I think I have covered this before, but the point of the insulation is to deflect the heat from the radiant tubing back up into the cement instead of losing it out the bottom of the floor into the stone and dirt below. The mesh is layed down for two reasons: it binds the cement as one cohesive unit, and it gives the radiant guys something to hook the tubing to.

A different look at the basement. You can see in the foreground there is a large hole in the ground that hasnt been filled with stone. This is going to be an area called a thickened slab that is poured like a footing, but is just poured at the time the floor is poured. This is being done where the base of the stairs is, and will give an additional foot of support for where the base of the stairs ends up being located.

The second part of the pour, which may or may not happen today, will be the back stairs. When we realised that we were going to have to rip these out for a new drain and to re-support the back wall, we decided to widen them. Once the slab in the basement is poured, they will start with the castings for the stairs. We are going to run radiant tubes in the stairs as an individual unit from the basement and "stub" them towards the garage.

The thinking here is if we get the 2nd story of the garage approved, then we are going to want radiant in the garage to heat the area and at that point we will run it from the garage, out the sidewalk, and into the stairs. The reason the back stairs cannot be connected to the basement is due to exterior systems running and anti-freeze mixture that you dont run inside your house. Lets hope we get the chance to use these tubes as this will mean far less shoveling in the winters!

This is a shot of some of the plumbing supplies currently layed out in the front room on the first floor. All of the piping and joints are ready to be set in their places now that the holes have been bored in the appropriate places for locations of drains etc.

Notice the siding is painted grey at the bottom now? Thats because I went and put two thick coats of Dry-Lock on it. Dry Lock is what people use to seal basement walls when they leakage etc. I decided to do this since this wall was going to sit inside the deck area and could get a bunch of water on it from the slats in the porch floor. I figured if I had the opportunity to do it, I might as well just do one more thing to help prevent issues down the road.

Radiant tubing is going in this morning. There is a possibility that they will begin laying the slab this afternoon as well. The plumber will also be working at the house today on getting the rough plumbing up and running as well.