Water Tank and Foundation Finishing

We finally decided at 1pm on Monday that we were going to do the water tank in the mechanical room. We had went and viewed our neighbours set-up and talked to him about his experience. It all seemed good enough. But meanwhile that morning, the crane had shown up and lowered the giant steel beams into the walls of the foundation.

I had watched the crane go to work in awe like a little kid – “Woah, a crane!” It was pretty awesome to see the crane towering over our trees and lowering the steel beam into the grooves that Taylor and Curtis had left when pouring the concrete a couple days earlier.

It was an impressive sight to see.  The slid in so effortlessly.

Within a few hours, the guys were hanging the joists and starting to the lay the floor. You’ll notice that the beams and all of joists are within the envelope of the foundation walls. This was intentional from an energy efficiency point of view. There is no thermal bridging at all with this system. Oftentimes typical houses are built with the joists sitting on top of the concrete wall or on a ledger of the wall. Both of these are a bit more work then simply using hangers. And the former, requires excessive use of spray foam to seal.

The way we did it required a taller basement wall, but there is zero chance of air leakage, thermal bridging or heat loss with this.

Anyways, the carpenters were working fast. Crap, Darcie and I realized, we had to decide immediately whether or not we were going to have the water tank in the basement. The carpenters were going to be done the floor system the next day, which meant that the tank needed to go in the basement NOW.

I made some calls and found a manufacturer east of Saskatoon who sold large tanks. We hopped in the truck and  made the 45 minute drive. We had debated briefly about what size of tank to get – essentially everyone we talked to told us to purchase the largest tank that would fit in the house. That meant we could get a 2100 US gallon tank – measuring 88″x88″. If you can’t picture that, well, it’s big.

We drove back to the land and within a couple hours were ready to haul the giant beast of a tank into the basement…

Only problem was the crane was long gone, and there was a huge gorge – 11′ deep and 6′ wide – all around the perimeter of the house. The four of us put our heads together. We all agreed this would have been a LOT better to have done when the crane was here… Crap.

The options were slim. The only possible way was to jimmy up a rickety makeshift bridge between the foundation and the ground using 2x10s and some left over joists. We decided to push the tank off of the trailer (there was no way to carry it) and roll it to the side of the gorge. From there we wrapped two large ratchet straps around the top of the tank and lashed them to the back of my tractor.

Now came the dangerous part – Taylor and Curtis pushed the tank onto the shoddily crafted bridge (one false step would mean certain death or at least dismemberment) while I slowly backed up the tractor thereby keeping tension on the straps and allowing the guys to ease the tank across the “Bridge of No Return.” My wife cringed as she watched the bridge bow under the weight of the tank and guys.

Miraculously no one was killed. Not even a little bit.

Once we had the tank to the edge (Taylor had also built a small ramp on the inside of the foundation), I could simply back the tractor up and lower it down.

That went well.

By the end of the day, the guys had the floor framed – pretty impressive. They’d poured the basement on Friday and floor was framed and sheeted by Wednesday. Time for a dance party.

We all grabbed a beer to celebrate and as we were standing there, an eagle flew by carrying a fish.  We were all in awe and Curtis said “and this is where you guys live?”!  It was awesome.

PS. One more geek/nerd energy efficiency thing: They wrapped the house in the water proofing seal, but also wrapped it up and around the plywood to create a complete seal around the entire basement. It is possible that a small amount of air leakage could occur through the plywood and the top of the joists and foundation wall. This simple trick tightens the house up even more.