The next step in the project is back-filling and compacting the dirt around the foundation walls:
Once the dirt is filled in, compacted and leveled nicely, the foam insulation goes down on the ground and the tubes for the in-floor heat are stapled to the foam insulation. When everything is done, hot water will be pumped through the tubes to heat the concrete slab floor.
…and then we are ready for pouring the concrete slab. The pictures here are a couple days after the slab was poured and we had gotten a little rain… Now we are ready to start framing walls.
Back to present time, it is winter and we had our first below zero weather over the past week or so… I think it reached about 26 below a few days ago which seems cold this year but is really pretty normal for January. It has been unseasonably warm and we haven’t gotten a lot of snow yet but I have a feeling we will see a late blast of real winter before it is all over…