Garage Foundation Watering

How to build a garage:

1. Clear land
2. Set foundation forms
3. Pour foundation
4. Water foundation until garage grows

Day two, and nothing has grown yet.

Beth watering our garage foundation

Or something like that. We've been spraying water on our foundation twice a day since it was poured, to try to slow down the curing process and increase its final strength. Our garage should be delivered from Mueller sometime next week!

After about seven days of curing, it should be cured enough to start erecting our garage.

Checking on the Garage Slab

Just a quick note today. We stopped by today to water the surface a bit and to take a look. Felipe was supposed to remove the forms today and start forming our house foundation, but it's been delayed till tomorrow morning.

We brought two 5-gallon buckets of water, and that wasn't enough for the 24' x 30' slab. We refilled a bit nearby and added some more before heading home.

Beth also decided to do a little yoga while we were there. :) The half facing North Mountain of Hueco Tanks will be the yoga room, and the back half will be the climbing/training and workshop.

Tree Pose in the future yoga room!

 The yoga side will have french doors and windows on both sides, making it essentially a 16' wide by 8' high window facing North Mountain. Quite the view for a yoga class, eh?

Down Dog in the future yoga room!

Pouring the Garage Foundation

Today we placed the anchor bolt templates and then poured the concrete.

Anchor bolts in their template, affixed to the concrete form.

We had a bit of trouble though; the forms were about 1/2" too long on the long side of the foundation, which would put the anchor bolts in the wrong place. If you look closely at the form below, you can see the shims we had to add.

More anchor bolt templates

 Once we finally had all of the anchor bolt templates in place, Felipe called the concrete company for delivery. The first truck brought 10 (cubic) yards.

Felipe pouring the concrete, with North Mountain, Huceo Tanks, in the background.

The concrete has been spread but not screeded yet.

We had a much later start than planned, with the truck not arriving until nearly 2:00 instead of 11:00 because of the form error. Luckily though, the clouds moved in which made it a lot cooler, helping to slow down the drying of the concrete.

After screeding and smoothing out the concrete.

Some more smoothing needs to be done

 This was definitely not something I could have done alone. I would be comfortable with MAYBE a 10' x 10' pad if I had help, since I could screed from outside the forms. I know I couldn't get the concrete as smooth as they did though!

Almost completely done!

They completed finishing the concrete tonight, and tomorrow they're coming back to remove the forms and start assembling the forms for the house!

Here's a time lapse of today's events!

Digging the Garage Footings

Today was a pretty difficult day of digging. Yesterday, Felipe Torres and his crew laid out the foundation forms using 2x6 boards.

These metal buildings need a 1.5" x 1.5" lip in the top edge of the slab to allow the wall sheets to sit slightly below the interior floor, so that's the extra piece of wood you can see on the inside of the forms.

We dug 16" deep, 12" wide. Luckily it rained the previous couple of days so the dirt was relatively soft. Here's my side. I think I kicked some butt today.

My digging progress

Chris had a pickaxe that he used to break up the other side. I just used my pointed digging shovel, which was definitely a bit harder. I left my trenches about an inch shallow and an inch narrow so they could finish them with nice square edges.

This is about as far as I could get before hitting drier, more packed dirt.

 And here is the finished dig.

Digging is done! I did the whole right side (30'). North Mountain, Hueco Tanks, in the background.

Digging is hard work. I moved about 1.5 cubic yards, over 2 tons of dirt!

Finally, Felipe showed up and they laid out the rebar in the footings and the mesh across the slab.

Footings with rebar and mesh

Tomorrow we'll place the anchor bolts (using templates) and then pour the concrete!