REBAR POST TENSION CABLE NEW HOUSE UPDATE

Getting closer:

This...

and this...

...were put together to make this (a closeup).

Here it was last weekend...

...and now all of that was put together for it to look like this Saturday!

The black plastic sheeting covering the ground is a vapor barrier.  It’s placed over the compacted soil to prevent moisture from the ground from seeping up into the concrete slab.  This helps protect the foundation from water damage and reduces the risk of cracking due to moisture expansion.

The red cables laid out in a grid pattern are the post-tension tendons. They’re high-strength steel cables encased in plastic sheathing (to prevent corrosion). You can see them running both horizontally and vertically across the slab area, and they extend into the trenches where they’ll be anchored.

The deep trenches are what they call the "beams".  Sometimes beams are just around the perimeter but for ours, they went all out.  The trenches are important because they form the beams that give the foundation its strength.  In a post-tension slab like we'll have, these beams act like a deep footing, anchoring the slab into the ground and providing extra support against soil movement. The grid pattern of trenches also helps the slab resist bending or cracking, especially in areas where the soil might swell or shrink due to moisture changes and with our clay soil, that can happen.  

They dug down pretty deep.  It was hard to tell in the photos so I stuck a tape measure down and it's just shy of four feet deep.  Ours was made to be a little deeper than normal and as the guy told us Saturday, "this foundation ain't going anywhere", ha. 

The depth of the trench is necessary for a few reasons:

• Soil Stability: The trench needs to extend down to a stable layer of soil, below the topsoil and any organic material that might compress or shift over time to make sure the foundation has a solid base.

• Load Distribution: The deeper beams can better distribute the weight of the house, especially for larger or heavier structures.

• Anchoring the Post-Tension Cables: The depth provides enough concrete mass in the beam to securely anchor the post-tension cables and withstand the forces applied during tensioning.

This is the trench they dig (there is one on the other side) where they pour in the concrete and it flows around through the "grid" of the beams.  Think of them as a support for the entire slab which is then poured on top of the concrete filled beams and then it's smoothed out and allowed to dry.

They call this phase the "make up" phase.  We asked why it's called that and they said what they are doing is considered "making up" the foundation, getting it ready for the next phase.  Makes sense to us!

Next step: OMG it's the concrete slab pour!