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Preparing for the Slab – Episode 5 of Building a Farmhouse

We are back with another update on our build. In our last episode we shared the building of the exterior block wall for the slab as well as our electrical inspection that did not go as planned.

We are thankfully past all that and are now even closer to getting the concrete poured for our foundation.

Below is what everything looked like when we were done with the block walls.

After the blocks were set and dry, it was time to bring in the gravel. We needed to fill the entire area inside the blocks full of gravel before the concrete slab was to be poured.

This took an obscene amount of gravel truck deliveries and time.

Of course, this could not go without a hitch as one of those dump trucks had to be towed away since it got stuck in the upright position after bringing in a load of gravel. We were down one truck for a while.

Good times.

As you can see one load of gravel barely makes a dent when dumped. We started with larger gravel pieces and then proceeded with smaller gravel pieces for the top layer of the slab.

They came in afterwards and compacted the gravel down to make sure there was no settling left.

After most of the gravel was delivered, we needed to get all of the plumbing work completed. For this we hired a plumber who specializes in commercial work.

In order to account for any issues that might arise in the future we made sure to add extra runs next to the current ones. This way there will be no need to bust concrete if any issues arise with our main plumb work if anything happens in the future.

We even added extra access points where we can run snake lines for any potential clogs in the drain work. We explain this a little better and got into much more detail in today’s video.

Nelson also did some electrical work this time. We have an open concept living room and kitchen area so our wall space is limited. Because of this we felt the need to add outlets on the floor of the living room space for side tables and lamps etc.

Nelson made to sure to add the necessary boxes for this as well as electrical work in the foundation for the island in the kitchen where our dishwasher will be.

Once this was done, they began to bring in fill dirt in order to bring the land up to the level of the house, especially the side of the garage entrances. The blocks were built pretty high on this side so we needed quite a bit of dirt to grade it properly.