This is a pretty cool shot of how the house is being supported. If you notice that the sill supporting the wall is bowed heavily in the middle, don't worry. I'm just a poor photo editor.
The supports don't always work out quite as well as we like, which is scary, but...eh... we lived. The left side of this one is a bit taller, or lower, rather. We had them both dug down as deep as the one on the right, but when we dug alongside it for our footer trench we had an accident. It started to collapse. So we lost several hours but were able to secure it. The house didn't cave in.
I guess we were misguided by the heavy clay content of the soil this far down (about 8 feet below ground.) Most of our dirt is silty sandy stuff, but we found a few areas that had a good 3-4 inch deep layer of pinkish, purplish clay. Very pretty but a pain to dig.
But dig it we must! Here Shawn's digging for rebar that he hammered horizontally into the dirt during the last pour. About 5 feet of the bars are in the previous footer and 5 feet are in the new one.
When you pour a footer is sections, the places they meet are called 'cold joints' and require these bars as extra reinforcement because these cold joints are the areas most susceptible to cracking over time.
Here's the end of one chute, just after the pour. Allowing for overflow is very important. We can always toss out the excess, but if we order too little.... oh, snap...
All done! This concrete has been poured and 'screeded' (leveled out by having a 2x4 dragged across it.) This is a cold joint, so the rebar is deep down in it. All that's left is to remove that spreader on top, let it dry (see the color change?) and the building can begin. We took the weekend to enjoy company and relax and this morning Shawn started the new walls.