Fox Blocks for the frost wall forms

Now that I'm back in town, it's time to get the foundation finished before old man winter gets here.

First order of business was installing a perimeter drain and setting the placement for the outside of the forms with 2 x 4's secured to the footings. The drain was backfilled with stone. More stone will go down once the walls are poured and the liner is wrapped around the walls. 

Monday we received the Fox Blocks. These are insulated concrete forms - basically large Styrofoam legos with a 6" cavity for the concrete wall. Here is the first course going on top of the footing. You can see the pallets of blocks in the background. Each group of 12 blocks on a pallet weighs just over 100 pounds, so they're pretty easy to work with, and surprisingly strong. 

 Given the building is an existing timber frame, the wall length for the building size wasn't an exact multiple of blocks, so we had to cut blocks in the middle of each wall to fill the gap. This will be a stacked seam the whole height of each wall.

Within a couple hours we were working on the second course of blocks. Every row gets horizontal rebar, and when we are done, vertical rebar will be placed every 24" to line up with the pins set in the footings.

 Less than eight hours in with two men and the wall is at 5' - 4" and waiting on my final locations for the rough openings for the garage doors and the side doors.

Rain slowed things the last two days, but we got a couple hours in yesterday putting in the bracing. This afternoon after the rain let up I finalized rough openings in the knee walls and installed the final course of half blocks. I need to lay the planks on the scaffolding, then install the rest of the clips along the final course vertically and horizontally, and install the electrical conduit to give me chases around the eight posts along the perimeter of the building. I also need a couple penetrations in the foundation for water and sewer. I'll also install a ledger board under the side door for the deck that will join the house to the garage. I can screw it temporarily to the integrated studs in the blocks, and set J-bolts in the concrete behind it.