Well, we just got crackin’ this past week on our next spec house in Belmont.  This past year and a half or so, we’ve either been busy on client projects or have been fortunate enough to have presold our spec houses.  The upshot is that the external motivation to write blog posts hasn’t been there. But, since we have this new house in Belmont that we need to market and sell, we’re gonna try and roll out weekly blog posts at the end of the week.

First off, the most important part of the construction process is carving out a good lunch spot.  The house is right near the edge of Quarry Park, where there is a pedestrian bridge that leads you from our lot over a small creek to some picnic tables under what I think is the most amazing Sycamore tree I have ever seen.

As far as construction stuff: we’re excited to have done another Insulated Concrete Foundation, which we get to put together and pour ourselves.  We only went two blocks high (32″ tall foundation) as we are trying to have an extremely minimal crawl space and want to keep the house really low to the ground.

We’ve also pretty much made the switch to open web floor trusses. On this house we have the bulk of the house truss projecting down into the foundation space rather than the typical procedure of having a floor joist sit completely above the foundation.  One benefit is that the 1st floor stays low to the ground and we avoid extra steps up from the exterior. I also love that the trusses are designed and built at Better Living Components, a manufacturing plant right here in Albemarle County.

Some insulation details we are proud of: As per our energy modeling of the house, we put down 2″ of rigid foam on the crawl space floor, which is defintely not the norm for a crawl space.  We also wrapped the inside face of the sill plate with foam, which often doesn’t get covered and we also will eventually wrap and tape the inside of the footer as well.

– Jeff