Building Block Foundation Walls | Stem Wall Installation

my poor little nissan welcome back to the episode where we lay block we're going to get our foundation stem wall built tomorrow i'm here with elena's dad mark and he's going to help me do a little bit of prep work we got to move some block around the mason gave me a nice little sketch of where he wants the five pallets of eight inch block we have one pallet a six inch block and we got some water i got a tote from work i'm borrowing uh that was that was the better alternative to buying like 25 gallon buckets from home depot and filling them with water um so i got this tote i got about 100 gallons of water in it that's what's going to be used to mix the mortar with and the last thing i got to do is fill stone around the footing up to basically the top surface and that's so that the masons have something to stand on pretty easily while they're laying block earlier this week i came by and stripped the footing forms off that was pretty easy it only took me about an hour by myself this right angle impact attachment from milwaukee was crucial for this job kind of loosen them pull right out to get all the the boards off it they didn't stick mostly because as the concrete shrinks it basically pulls away from the form and it it de-molds itself more or less so i'm going to take all but a couple just to keep them as a ramp over the trench here after cleaning these two by eight forms off we should be able to reuse them on another part of the project or another project entirely [Music] i got a killer deal on these skid steer forks 400 bucks from a buddy who worked at a big construction company that wrecked the machine and didn't need them anymore [Music] the skid steer made this job 10 times easier i cannot imagine doing this with a shovel and a wheelbarrow so [Music] [Music] moving these blocks around was the first real test of my skid steers load limit i thought i was gonna be in the clear after i picked up this pallet of six inch blocks and even then i could just barely lift the thing off the ground but the eight inch blocks proved otherwise and i could not budge these things at 90 blocks per pallet and 36 pounds per block the weight of these pallets was around 3 250 pounds and my skid steer is rated to lift 1500 pounds and that includes the pallet fork so i was definitely pushing it however i found that i could skid the pallets across the ground and i got the job done despite some broken pallet boards and some loss of our sparse grass [Music] just about 12 hours later the guys were on site they started by setting the laser up for square and level and snapping lines on the footer the next task was to distribute all the blocks off the pallets and onto the edge of the trench and basically alternate them with these mortar pans the goal is to reduce the distance that a mason has to travel in order to get either block or mortar at any given point along the foundation first step is to set all four corners plumb level and square and then fill in between the corners i decided to use this horizontal reinforcement wire and the joints it basically acts like a rebar within the mortar joints it helps hold everything together when the mortar does inevitably crack it was recommended by the engineer i ran my plans through and it was a very minimal added cost so i figured why not we're underway here on day three you can see all the guys behind me it's only about 7 45 in the morning right now and the four corners already built the first row is already down everyone started showing up around 6 30 in the morning they shot the corners square and level with the laser our foundation was within 1 8 of an inch all the way around so that rotary laser investment was definitely a good call and sean the foreman said that we should come do their concrete foundations from now on because they don't see anything like that in the commercial world that's for sure so there's a crew of six guys here plus sean who's kind of leading everything and uh and they're flying they're they're all really good i think two of the guys are foreman at their commercial company and all the rest are pretty much block laying apprentices so they all really know what they're doing and uh they're really cranking it out lena's on the way over with some trash cans for the mortar bags that are piling up and uh to come check out the site but it's pretty amazing what can be done in such a short amount of time hello hey what are you thinking i'm just trying to learn i have a lot of questions so i'm thinking of my questions that i'm going to ask alex or the foreman for the top corsa block i wanted to use a six-inch bond beam that will actually receive a piece of horizontal rebar within the channel that's carved out and i'll provide strength around that top perimeter course to hold concrete in when we pour the slab the six inch block also works well with our wall thickness and makes sure that we won't be able to see the edge of a block or insulation when we have the slab port it turned out actually to be cheaper just to buy a regular six inch block and pay these guys a nominal fee just to use their concrete saw and cut out the webs as they need they do make knockout blocks which essentially have the slots precast in here and you can just take a hammer and knock the webbing out however they were about triple the cost of these regular six inch block and i got free delivery so i couldn't complain the only place we don't have the six inch course is in front of the garage doors where we will pour the slab through for the man doors i wanted to keep the thermal brake so we will have the door sill on top of those blocks by the time morning brake rolled around two of the four walls were built [Music] [Music] oh go elena she's getting it baby go sears lawn mower and she's going baby she got it she's gone she's gone [Music] guys are finishing up the last two sides of the wall this first side right behind me is pretty much all done and uh they're making incredible progress in such a short time let's do a time check here it's 10 35 in the morning so we are barely three and a half hours into the job and foundation's almost done so needless to say i'm really happy to hire this out loving how good it's looking right now it's extremely straight square and i'm really happy with it [Music] [Applause] [Music] never [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Applause] well believe it or not it is just afternoon not even five hours into the project foundation wall is completely done everything's cleaned up everyone has headed home for the day to enjoy the rest of their saturday i'd say it was definitely a win-win i did not have to do any of this labor which i really wouldn't have been good at anyway the guys got paid for a quick side job they're in and out everything went pretty much exactly as planned the footer was good block was all there no material shortages or anything like that and everyone's happy so really happy with how it all turned out foundation is super square super straight i haven't checked the level or anything with the laser but i can't imagine it's going to be really too far off so that will be really handy when we are finally framing i built this little ramp behind me and that's going to be an easy way to just get over the foundation wall without stepping on it while it's still unreinforced and we're going to have to do that quite a bit because the next step is under slab plumbing and putting insulation on the inside of our walls before we can backfill everything and grouted i forgot about that the whole wall is going to get grouted solid a question we've gotten a little bit on social media is why we chose to go with a block foundation wall instead of poured honestly it's a long conversation probably could be its own video but there were a few different factors that led to this decision for us first of all we knew someone who does block i was really a friend of a friend i didn't know them personally but they do multi-million dollar block work they work at a commercial masonry company it's one of my best friends father-in-law's foremans at this at this commercial masonry company and i knew that by hiring them i would really get absolute top quality product second is cost it's probably pretty comparable honestly by the very end of it i'll do the math eventually and see what it really was but concrete is definitely expensive and the block wall kind of negates the savings there because i still will be filling this completely solid however i didn't i don't really have to if i didn't want i could only do the the rebar's cells if i really wanted but in general when added up black walls are typically a little bit cheaper than the concrete when all things are considered like labor materials that sort of thing i also really like the flexibility of the block wall i like that the wall can be up and then i can go do my under slab plumbing and knock out exactly where i need to i have to put conduits in the forms before i know exactly where everything is going to go not a big deal it could be done either way but that was just another reasoning i had so at the end of the day i mean it could have totally gone either way cost probably would have been pretty comparable with how i'm doing this which is definitely overkill for this foundation doing the fully grouted solid wall vertical rebar the horizontal rebar at the top comes out in the wash probably i'm sure but i'm sure i'll get lots of hate in the comments about concrete guys that could have done this for cheaper or whatever but unfortunately i don't really care so i'm happy with how it turned out and if i have any other block projects in the future i know exactly who to call in fact these guys do stone veneers as well and we will be doing a stone veneer wall in the front so i might be giving them a call back shortly and speaking of cost comparison i actually will be publishing the cost for this whole project it's going to be on our patreon page be sure to check that out if you're curious about it the next phase of this project is going to be under slab plumbing so there's going to be a whole cluster of pipes here in this back quadrant near my utility room i'll be doing that work myself and she'll just have to put one hole in the foundation over on the left side there where the main sewer outlet's going to go as always thanks for watching make sure to like and subscribe if you want to see more and follow the rest of the journey as we build this house elena posts a lot more on the socials at mason dixon acres instagram tick tock facebook follow us there as well thanks again and see you next week [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Mason Dixon Acres

Views: 69,758

Keywords: diy, construction, homebuild, selfbuild, debtfree, mortgagefree

Id: h0eZOi3TYvU

Length: 16min 36sec (996 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 23 2022