BUILDING THE FOUNDATION
Once the existing cottage was removed from the site (see demolition HERE), a new foundation was the next step to building the new home.
A full basement was not possible because of the ground water table due to the home being near a lake, so we instead integrated a crawl-space, which goes under the main floor to allow for access to all the building systems that are distributed under the floor. A concrete slab finishes the floor of the crawl space. There are a couple of bearing walls in there as well, one of which can be seen in the pictures below.
The concrete walls are well insulated on the interior side and under the concrete slab to provide a complete, high performance building envelope. The foundation walls are poured-in-place concrete and sit on standard concrete spread footings.
The floor framing is TJI pre-engineered wood floor joists. The foundation wall uses a reverse brick ledge to support the wood floor joists. The second floor framing is also TJIs. The finish floor of the new home aligns with the finish floor of the existing garage, and is not too much above the grade of the lot. The house is designed with Universal Design principles and is fully accessible by wheel chair should the need ever arise.
Michael R. Carlson, Architect 