Codes
Curt and his subs pulled it off! We made it through plumbing, mechanical, and electrical inspections last week. There were a few conditions on electrical, but nothing that will hold up the schedule.
The final Frame inspection was made on Wednesday, setting us up for drywall installation.
SClarkson-day-one
Well we started off with a glitch on the very first day. On small urban lots, you are required to install shoring piers so that the neighboring properties don’t cave in during excavation -- and to keep the workers safe too. However, what was to be a straightforward process suddenly proved otherwise. The boring for the shoring piers had to stop due to extremely sandy soils - too much fine grain loose sand at 17 feet to get it out of the hole (and they need to go down 25 feet). So, a casing type boring rig needs to be used, and it’s going to be a more involved process.
The casing is that big pipe in the photo above. They slide it down with the auger and when they hit the sand, it helps to trap it and keep it moving back up out of the hole. When pouring the concrete if the sand continues to cave in, the casing can be used to hold the sides of the hole up while the concrete is poured in. The casing is then eased out of the hole. This is much more involved in that the concrete truck needs to hang around most of the day to be there for each hole as it’s completed.
Let’s hope Tuesday is a better day.
We’ve reached the biggest milestone yet. We got our plans approved by the City -- after 5 weeks! We were actually hoping to have started building LAST spring, but designing our own home took longer than we thought. In any case, looks like we’ll be starting mid-October!
Nancy and I submitted the plans to the City of Denver Building Department on August 14. We are relieved and very happy to have reached this milestone after nearly a year of work. We would like to thank Joe and Jason at KL&A for a great structural set, Julie and Judy at the Brendle Group for lots of assistance on energy analysis and mechanical specifications, Ron at CO Engineering for the surveys, and Mike at CO Geoscience for the soils and shoring report. We will keep our fingers crossed that the plans will make it through without any major hiccups.
We have selected Curtis Welch for the contractor on the project and are excited that we will be using SIPs for the exterior walls (Structural Insulated Panels). He brings valuable experience with this type of construction to the project, in that he is one of the few in Denver who has actually built projects using them!
The Denver zoning code puts restrictions on overall height and location of your house on each lot. The emphasis in our neighborhood is on a good sized setback from the street, the bulk of the house within the center area of the lot, and a lower garage near the back of the lot.
