Almost ready to pour 1st floor on our Green Addition

Our addition project using ICF blocks is progressing. We're getting ready for the 4th concrete pour. This will bring the concrete up to the level of the 2nd floor! One more after that! (The first 3 pours were: 1) foundation footing, 2) four feet of the garage level, and 3) remaining 8ft of the garage level)

It's been nice walking around in the kitchen, looking out the windows at the yard, and finalizing the positions of the windows and kitchen layout.

In the pictures of the inside of the addition, you can see where there are vertical columns attached to the walls and supports attached to the sub-floor to keep the blocks in place for the pour. Once the concrete hardens, all of this hardware will be removed.

We made one change to the size of one of the windows, where we went from 3 double hung windows to just 2. We made this change after the foam for that opening was cut. You can see that on one of the pictures, where there is plywood visible on either side of one of the window openings instead of the foam insulation. The foam is behind the plywood, but because they used smaller sections of foam to fill in the gap, they needed the plywood to hold the foam in place. It was cheaper to do this than to rebuild that wall with blocks. Once the concrete is poured, they'll remove the plywood. With this construction technique, you do have to have the windows in place before you pour! It's not like knocking out some wood framing, and moving a window if you don't like where it is.