DIY Concrete Forms (Forming the foundation footings!) 

Haha, it was hard to give it a good hit when your leg is the backstop lol! Thanks for watching!

Grandpas used to be so loving

Glad you enjoyed it, we do have a video specifically about the string lines (or batter boards) if you hadn't seen that one it may help as well!

I guess I just lucked out lol!

Time for a replacement then

That's awesome! We've been at it for about a year now so it will probably take us another 6 months till we get moved in!

That's awesome to hear! I hope our videos help, and good luck with your project, let me know if you have any questions!

Glad our video was helpful good luck on your workshop!

I will cover it again in the video where we hook up to grid power, but I'll also try to explain it here since that video is a couple weeks out. Basically there is some guy (Ufer) who found that he could use the rebar that was incased in the concrete foundation as a ground instead of having to pound ground rods into the earth. Code allows you to use the rebar that is encased in concrete as a ground, however our inspector wanted us to run a 4 awg copper grounding wire into the concrete instead of just using the rebar. Code says that the rebar has to be continuous for 20ft, or if the 20ft is made up of separate pieces of rebar they must be tied together with the normal steel tie, or you can weld them to make a connection between them. Code also says that you can use a 4 awg copper wire that is run 20ft in the foundation instead of the rebar, however I believe our inspector only wanted the wire to extend 10ft into the foundation (not sure why he didn't want the full 20ft of wire, or why he didn't accept the rebar as the ground but he's the one who passes us so we gotta do what he says) I hope this answers your question if you have more specific questions feel free to let me know! Thanks for watching!

I think the main benefit is not having to drive ground rods into the ground. We have very rocky soil here so it would be hard to do a normal ground. It's also just how things are done in this area which isn't the best reason but it's what I got... If you dig back on pure living for life's channel they have a decent explanation of a Ufer ground.

Does it do any good to have your grounding in the concrete. It’s called grounding for a reason it goes in the ground

That's a good tip! I had a couple of pieces of pipe but they were 8ft long so they wouldn't have worked.

Once the rebar was on the ground and not on the blocks the post driver worked great. Also the half hour drive to town, then half hour back, plus cost of buying or renting somthing that I would use for about 15 minutes was not worth it. Thanks for watching!

buy rent spend spend, why put in any sweat equity.... the american way a thumbs up to you, young man

Well as I have built myself three houses it makes life easier and the job is faster and a better job of bending the rebar to be placed properly in the footings. But hey each to their own. I will go spend a few bucks to speed things up and get a overall better product and pass my footing rebar inspections. Just saying is all.

The amount and size of bar wouldnt justify the cost. some plumbing pipe would have been better or two solid posts

I tried a couple peices of pipe I had laying around but they were so long it was unruly... thinking about it now I could have cut them with my band saw but at the time I didn't think of it.

So in some spots we buried the boats a little to help with any gaps at the bottom of the form. In the places where the forms were partly buried it was an issue and we even had to leave some in places. However even when the forms were close to rocks or the side of the trench, as long as we didn't Barry the form they were easy to get off. Hope that helps!

@@PootsPastures it actually does give me some insight. Thank you ! New subscriber 🍻

Thanks for subscribing! And if you have any other questions about what we did let me know an I'll try to answer them the best I can. Good luck with your project!!

Yes we did a stem wall with a crawl space. We have a video about encapsulating the crawlspace where you can see what it looks like finished. But we did not excavate the mound out. Thanks for watching

The post driver was awesome it worked really well once I got the rebar off of the blocks and on the ground! Thanks for watching!

Good advise.

I went with build block because there are only a few companies that will sell directly to consumers and they were one. They also have a plant near us so we were able to pick up the order a save on shipping. I honestly don't think there is a huge difference in the different ICF manufacturers I think it comes down to cost and what's available near you. Thanks for watching, I hope this helped

What is the price you paid for icf if you remember

I think they cost about 2,000

Good to hear, thanks for watching!

Thanks I think she's pretty great!

I'm not sure it's just non copyrighted music that I got from RU-vids library

Haha well at least she's still helping lol! I've gotten pretty lucky with mine she puts up with a lot of crap and working long hours!

The footers are 2 feet wide, and 1 foot deep. Hope that helps!

I actually hadn't done any concrete before this build, but let me tell you concrete is by far one of my favorite things to do. And I'm a paramedic. I had some general carpentry knowledge, and a good amount of electrical knowledge before I started. Thanks for watching, hope you enjoy the build!

I dont think he has. No hate, just sayin.

You're all good I hadn't done anything remotely like this before, but if I had to do this foundation again I would do some things differently. But I'll get another chance when we do our barn!

So In our area is done a couple of ways, the first way is how we did it which is to build a form, and the second way is to dig a narrow whole and pour concrete directly into that. I was just more confident that I could get it level and square doing it with the forms. Hope that answers your question!

@@PootsPastures oh thanks for answer. I am just taking it from financial standpoint. We are trying to design our house on budget and I was wondering if it is necessary because in our country it is cheaper to get one or two more mixes of concrete instead of framing it like you did. But I guess that highly depend on where you live

Yeah and if you are pouring a slab you can do a mono pour and pour the footings and the slab all at once which would probably be more economical. We just had a crawlspace. When we do our barn we are going to so a mono pour and do it all at once.

Our frost line is about 24 inches, and our county requires the footings to be at least 30" into undisturbed soil. We also just used the native soil to backfill, if your going to have drainage issues and are going to do a French drain, you could use drain fabric and washed rock around the drain, but we didn't have an issue so the native soil worked for us

@@PootsPastures Thank you very much. So the bottom of your footer set 30" in to undisturbed soil? Or is the 30" measured from the top of your footing. Thank you

From the bottom of the footing, and since we are on a slight incline the most shallow portion is 30" and the deepest point is 40" so we have about a ten inch slope over 30 feet or so.

@@PootsPastures Thank you very much for the information.

I have one, if I want using it I probably left it somewhere else that day lol!

No there has not been. We were told by our inspector not to add any contacted fill and that the foundation should sit on "undisturbed soil". If we added compacted fill we would have had to send the soil to a lab for some sort of compaction test. Hope that answers your question!

@@PootsPasturesThank you, yes it has. We have loamy sandy soil and under it clay, so I think it will settle unless we use compacted crushed stone under our foundation. Great videos and hope you guys are enjoying your new house.

The foorprint of the house is 20x32 so it's 640 square feet. The ICF'S cost just under 2,000, but would have been more if I had to jave them shipped but I picked them up from the factory myself. Hope this helps!

That is our ground. In our county they require a ufer ground. Usually this is done by having one piece of rebar that protrudes from the concrete that you ground your electrical system to (this uses all the rebar in the foundation as a ground). However our county requires we run an actual copper ground wire inside of the foundation. I don't remember the specific length they require. Hopes this helps!

@@PootsPastures did they call it a ground or a bonding wire?

@@PootsPastures very interesting, I have never heard of this technique before. Learned something new today!

Thanks!

Just because their impossible for you doesn't mean they are impossible for us.

So I never thought about hiring a contractor I always wanted to do it myself. I have since heard some horror stories that made me thankful I didn't hire someone. But on everything I was able to research I found that the labor is about 50% the total cost. The couple of contractors we have dealt with (for the septic, and drywall) have been alright, we had issues with each one. it's deffinately nice not having to rely on others, but then you can only blame yourself when you mess up!

Thanks!

Thanks! And build block they were relatively local and would sell direct to consumers instead of having to go through a lumber yard. Hope that helps!

@@PootsPastures it does. I’m using Buildblock too on a building that’s 20x50. Doing things very similar but using fastfoot and steel forming stakes. Nervous since I’ve never done before.

I've never heard of fast foot, by the photo it looks pretty cool I'll have to do some research before we do our barn. And I was really nervous before we did our foundation too, just double check everything is level and you'll be good. After doing our concrete and a patio for one of my friends I'm kind of addicted to the sound of s trowel on concrete!

Poots, how long did it take to set up your forms AFTER you had all the string layout done? I’m at that point and trying to gauge how long to set the forms to the string, tie rebar, set the vertical rebar and be ready for concrete. BTW very nice use of the fence post pounder to bend your vertical rebar!!!!

We had a 2 week break in the middle when we went on vacation but if it were full days it probably would come out to 4 full days of work to get batter boards set up all the way to being ready to pour. The biggest challenge we had was if we forgot to get somthing at the store or needed more concrete stakes we had to drive 30 minutes back into town. Hope that helps you!

It was holding the rebar to the spreader. We just tried bending the rebar without taking off the zip tie and it just broke the zip tie.

Lmao

We did end up buying a bunch more metal stakes. The wood stakes would have worked great if we had the right soil type. And they did work We just broke a bunch in the process

7 pallets total and a 16ft trailer. If you check out our Instagram we have a picture of it loaded (it was a wile ago so you'll have to look for it)

Well when I'm building my house I'm the boss and I'm probably the best worker I have lol.

Kind of a silly comment. This guy isn't on a crew - he is a do it yourselfer. He got the job done, even if it wasn't pretty.

Well the house is built...