Framing in the Pit: Zero Entry Home, Hold-downs, Supports and Crawlspace framing.

January 13th, 2021

Hey all, it’s been an interesting couple of weeks. Our family was able to take a quick ski vacation to Schweitzer which was a lot of fun! This is the 2nd year we've rented a ski in ski out condo. We split the cost of a ski in ski out condo with a bunch of family, when you have young kids learning to ski it is definitely the way to go. David and I were able to sneak off and take a few runs which was amazing!

It ended up being a good time to take a quick trip as it snowed every day that we were gone. We accumulated about 18 inches over the four days we were there. It's hard to get much done when it's snowing like crazy on you. You spend more time shoveling and melting ice then you do actually getting anything done. In the end it worked out well I'm sure we would've struggled to make much progress over those few days anyway.

David and Dan spent all of Monday shoveling 18 inches of snow out of that crawlspace so they could get back at it. Right now they are working on building the pony walls and sheer walls that sit on the footings. The pony walls support the floor joists of the first floor, and the sheer walls will continue up through the second floor. It is very tedious work as you have to make sure everything is exactly placed perfectly. These sheer walls need to stack on top of each other and tie into each other. The walls in the crawlspace need to perfectly line up with the walls above. It’s a lot of measuring, re-measuring, using a laser level, checking and double checking. The work they are doing now is laying the foundation for the rest of the project. If they screw this up it means room sizes will be off and the open balcony won’t run straight. I told David he can't screw up the kitchen! All of the other rooms it doesn't matter if something is a few inches off, but I have already ordered kitchen cabinets. The kitchen needs to be perfect or those cabinets won't fit and there is no way to ammend the order at this point. Luckily David and Dan are both perfectionists and so far everything has been accurate to less than 1/4 of an inch.

Our home is zero entry home. This adds an interesting structural component. Instead of the floor joists sitting on the sill plate (the sill plate is the pressure treated wood that sits on top of and is bolted down to the stem wall) which is the normal way of home construction the floor joists are actually inset. The floors joists will actually sit on a pony wall that is built on top of the footings immediately next to the stem walls. These pony walls are shorter than the stem walls. This allows the subfloor to be parallel with your stem walls. In the end it essentially creates a home where you do not have to walk up steps to get into the front door. The front door and floor is at ground level and is level with foundation. This is a nice feature as our large front and back porch will be level with our doors and no stairs will be required to get to our front and back porches as they will be ground level. When we designed this house we designed it with our 80 year old selves in mind. I wanted everything to be handicap accessible. We hope to stay in this home for as long as possible and tried to keep some of these things in mind during the design processes.

We have run into a couple of snags. Our foundation crew did an amazing job. However, these plans are extraordinarily complex and the number of bolts and hold downs that are required to be placed in the stem walls and footings is completely insane! The foundation crew told us that he has done 25 unit apartment complexes with far less structural engineering than we had. I’m pretty sure this home will withstand a hurricane! That being said a few bolts were missed. We are having to drill some anchor bolts into the footings to place some 6 x 6 post brackets. We are drilling these in and then using epoxy to secure them. Not ideal, but also not uncommon. This technique is used routinely in home construction to make sure these bolts and brackets are in the right place. It's not ideal but will work well. The posts that sit in these brackets will support the open balcony and the second level. Right now they look like gigantic sticks sticking out of the pit.

I am going to be so happy when they start laying floor joist and getting the sheeting on the deck. This will make it much easier for us to tarp off the area and snow control will be much easir. It will be wonderful to start seeing some of the work above ground. Right now it’s pretty frustrating as they have been working very hard but all the work they've done will be covered up by subfloor and hidden in the crawlspace. I keep reminding myself that there’s a lot of measuring and re-measuring involved and if they do this part right they will set themselves up for the next part of the process to go much quicker. As David says there’s three stories to this house 1. the crawlspace 2. the main level and 3. the second floor. It’s easy to forget about how much framing goes into the crawlspace. David has promised me that they’ll be laying floor joists by Monday. I’m crossing my fingers that happens!