THE WALL

So the house is on a creek, and we mean to flood the creek right up against the house.  Hence the name of this blog.  We felt that concrete would create a much better dam than concrete block, so the entire east side of the foundation, above the helical piers, is 12" poured concrete.  We also used a water-impermeable admixture called Hycrete to prevent infiltration over time.
With the wall finally formed and braced off, we began the pour.  Every bit of concrete in this house had to be pumped.  We also filled the cells of most of the concrete block with the leftover concrete from the poured wall.

Foundations

We struggled with the weather.  First it was a late snow, then just a relentlessly wet spring...

That last is our tiny cabin in the snow.  Our family of three has spent the last 3 years in here.  Finally, after weeks of waiting, we began the foundation work.  Our first surprise was poor soils near the creek.  We sank 14 helical piles under the footings, each rated at 50-75000 pounds capacity, before pouring footings on top.  Finally, after a break in the weather, we began laying block... 

That's our basement under the carport in the background, and our sunken living room in the foreground.

Excavation

Or, as my wife describes it:  big freakin' mess.  She's a landscape architect, so trees are particularly precious to her.  We're hoping to save as many trees as possible, even very close to the house, as that's what drew us to this site.

There was a natural break in the trees that really drove the design of the house.  It's laid out along two intersecting axes:  one north-south and the other northeast-southwest.  Here's a site plan...

That's the main house in the relatively level area.  The creek is to the east and the approach is to the south.  The carport is accessed off the 'old road bed' to the west.  

The first floor is slab-on-grade, to take full advantage of radiant heat.  Our only basement is under the carport, which is almost as high as second floor level, relative to the house.  So it's this basement that receives the majority of our attention during excavation - the rest is essentially leveling out the pad.

The Site

We live on a farm in the mountains of western North Carolina. Our current house is a 350 square foot cabin, built with the intention of immediately starting construction on a real house. Then came the economy. And architects are notoriously slow. Did I mention my wife and I are both architects? So our design process was doubly slow.

But back to the site. We're building on a mountain stream, on the edge of the pasture, the garden and the meadow. It will all make sense eventually. In the image above, I'm standing in the garden. Directly across the creek is the house site, with the pasture to the left and the meadow out of frame to the right. Here's another shot...

Here I'm standing in the meadow, with the house site directly ahead on the right side of the creek, the pasture beyond and the garden on the left, across the creek.  The orientation is almost due North-South following the creek.