WK18C: Waterproofing and Framing

So this week began with the framing phase of the project. While the first level of the project is below grade, the upper two floors are all out of wood and require a different team to complete. We are using York Construction. I’ve used them before on my house and love Angel and his crew. The owner, Nathan York is a pretty easy-going guy and always has good ideas about how to save time and money. The crew showed up on Tuesday for the “lumber drop” and loaded all of their wood onto the site. This included several heavy beams and required most of the first day to get everything stored on the hillside and in the lower floor area.

We expect the framing to take about 8 weeks and should be ready for our roof coverings in late October- Just when the weather will start to change.

The deep beams shown in this picture are what’s known as “drag struts”. Drag struts are structural beams that reduce the lateral drag on the building due to retained earth and wind loads. Our building is quite tall and thus requires a bit of extra help to reduce the tipping effect of the wind and any lateral forces created by earthquakes.

I went by the site tonight and they framers had put up all of their drag struts and next week will being on the joists that will sit between the struts. The project is starting to look like a building now, and it’s exciting to see how much progress we’ve made, despite the 1 month stoppage.

The site is quite dangerous right now due to the deep trenches that have been excavated for the waterproofing. The waterproofing began on Wednesday and involves three coats (or 90 mls) of a mastic waterproofing system. This is then covered by a drain board, and then supplemented by perforated pipe and gravel (stay tuned for this). The water proofers come by in the morning to put on a coat of the material, and then come back the next day to repeat. They do several walls in one day, and have a pretty tough gig, considering the vapors released by the waterproofing chemicals.

Having spread waterproofing before, I don’t envy them a bit. Prior to all of this though the walls and the footing have to be cleaned. I spent Monday in the trenches with a laborer sweeping and vacuuming the footing to prep it for the waterproofers. I had expected our masonry sub, Garcia Masonry, to take care of it, but after a couple of angry phone calls back and forth, we couldn’t come to an agreement and thus it was left to the Urban Operations to complete the task. Cleaning the footing is critical because the waterproofing wraps down the wall and over the footing, creating a leak proof (we hope!) covering. Water doesn’t like to go uphill, so it’s doubtful that there will be much chance of leakage.