Town Home Project

Somewhat of a common style.  Some the newer neighborhoods tend to have this "quasi craftsman" look.  We are a fairly small builder so it helps if we have somewhat of a different product than the nationals.   The single family homes in this neighborhood are similar.  There are a tital of something like 4 builders in there.  Not really sure who is still in business though....

Those "city houses" I posted in another thread were in the city and were supposed to have somewhat of a historic look.   When I grow up I'd like to build real new-old "historic" houses.  Need someone to fund me first though.

The bright colors go over well in some neighborhoods.  Other neighborhoods are all light tan, med tan, light gray, med gray, off white, etc.  

http://www.hbgcolumns.com/?gclid=CPKllb_iyZwCFR2dnAodfkQ-Kw

All the building supplies around here sell 'em.

We actually started this 2 weeks ago so I have some more progress to report already...

Boxing the monoslabs

In this step the concrete guy, using the surveyors marks "boxes" the slabs.  What he does is installs his form boards on 3 sides to set up a reference, both horizontal and elevation, so that the plumber can come in there and install his under slab piping and get his risers where the toilet, sinks, and 2nd floor stack, etc, needs to be.  The 4th side is left open so that the plumber can drive his excavator in there to dig his pipe trenches that end up under the house.    

Pic 005 Eddie on his machine with his helper and the rod of the laser level.  All forms are set using the laser.

Bldg 4 Footprint A quick sketch of approx the building footprint - actually made for another purpose and is another building.  The layout gets a little complicated - especially since the sketch doesn't show the brick pockets, which have to be built into the forms.  The unit foundations will have brick on the front and the exterior sides of the bldg.

Pic 004 Jumping ahead a bit, the back profile of the building boxing.  They do the entire back and 2 outer sides, and then fill in the interior sides that delineate each TH unit form the adjacent one.   In the pic you see the guy in white holding the rod with the laser sensor on it and you can see the laser over on the left.

Pic 003 Form board corner lined up with a surveyor's pin.  Notice the expertly crafted joinery :-).  BTW - you see that the form boards are re-used and pretty cruddy.  They don't use any kind of form release lubricant because they strip the forms after the concrete has taken it's initial set - like maybe 3 or 4 hours into the pour, so the concrete hasn't had a chance to really get hard enough for the forms to be really stuck.  Stripping the forms ASAP allows them to finish the sides of the slab and make them look nice since the sides will show in some areas.

Pic 002 More digging and dressing it up with a shovel.  This concrete guy has a mini excavator, but there is still a fair amount of hand digging.  Another concrete guy I have digs everything by hand as his only machine is a skid steer.  I think this project might be a little beyond his capabilities.   I need it in fast enough so we don't end up with footer excavations full of rain water. 

Selecting subs is often a matter of getting the right guy for the job - even though most subs will say "we do it all".    Sometimes this means the right sized crew.  We have a much larger concrete sub that does our larger projects - but he is likely more expensive - they have an office with office help, an estimator, and all kinds of heavy equipment.   Don't really need all that for this job... 

Pic 006 Setting up a batter board for one of the interior sides.  Should have had more of these previously, but I missed part of the process.  Setting up batter boards is actually the first thing they do.

Edited to remove some extra pics - no way to do it when first typing the posting.

Edited 9/3/2009 7:13 pm ET by Matt

Edited 9/3/2009 7:15 pm ET by Matt