Kitchen Floor Forms and More Walls!

We finally finished excavating for the kitchen footing!  there was so much dirt that I ended up putting the last of it in a pile in the middle of the living-room! 

Once the kitchen footing was dug,  we started setting the steel,  Then the HVAC crew from Precise Air came in to set a few ducts.  In the picture below the main duct to the dining-room is on the left,  and the suspended floor is taking shape on the right.

The Dining-room duct will eventually connect to the HVAC unit in the garage,  but for now it will end in the crawl-space,  so that access in to the crawl-space is not blocked.

At the other end of the crawl-space is a complicated series of fittings that gets the duct up into the Amdeck,  through the concrete,  down into the cellar,  and up into the family room.

From the Cellar below the duct is a lot easier to see and deal with.  

The Amdeck makes it very easy to run ducts and other utilities,  I simply cut out the area I need with a sawsall.  The crew custom assembled the duct outside,  then installed it from below.

FORMS

One edge of the kitchen slab is at the back of the music nook in the living-room.  Junior,  one of my laborers has gotten really good at building strong forms!  Here are a few of his taller forms, the back of the music nook ...

... and at the top of the stairs leading up from the living room.  Under this section of form is the access to the crawl space.

Here is a view down the crawl space with the forming in place.  it is only 24" high!  One of the electricians actually snaked his way through this to set a piece of conduit at the far end!  

Now the steel mesh was placed,  and the #3 rebars were positioned. The steel was ready!

On the north wing of the house,  the 2nd floor walls were starting to rise!  

This is the Master Suite,  looking back toward the Bathroom window.

We also took some time to move the Amdeck out of the garage and stage it close to where we would needed it next.  

This allowed the electricians to start!  First,  they set the main panel and permanent meter at it's position in the buttress between the garage doors.

Then they ran flex out of the box and through a hole in the concrete that I had plugged with foam before pouring.  The flex will run to various major needs for power,  a subpanel centrally located in the house,  the AC condensers,  etc.  

They also set the first box for outlets!  This was very easy in the ICF.  We simply cut a channel in the foam with a "hot wire" tool,  attached the box to the concrete,  then ran the flex in the channel and attached it to the box.  Done!  No drilling through wood studs, either!  On a future blog entry I will show a little movie of the "hot-wire"!  Not a typical construction tool,  but very handy here!

In the next entry,  the Kitchen Slab is poured!