Residential Construction - Recorded Time Lapse

Welcome to the Professional Engineering Inspections WEBCAM construction page.  The following images were taken during home constructed by a builder in the Houston area.  This means that the construction process will be significantly similar to the process a typical buyer might encounter during construction of a new home.  This is not a project of ours we just thought the images were interesting and informative.  The provided images and comments are intended to be general in nature to be informative to our clients, covering information frequently asked for and often of interest to our clients.

You may view a time lapse of the stages of construction on this page.  I did not get the camera running until after the soil preparation was completed, let me bring you up to date on where the video series begins.

The process starts out with an empty lot.  Plans are developed for a home design to fit the lot, soils sampling is taken, foundation design is developed, and the plans are engineered and pushed through the city for permitting if you are in a municipality that requires permitting.

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      No assumptions should be made regarding permitting and code enforcement.  Since the Texas Residential Construction Commission was defunded by the legislature, there is no standardized mechanism in Texas requiring code inspections in unincorporated areas.  If you do not live in a municipality that funds and enforces code inspections, you probably have no oversight unless you hire an outside inspector.  Some counties are working to implement this type of program and requirements may differ by county.  If you do not contractually obligate your builder to address your inspector’s concerns and to meet a specific standard for construction, you still have little recourse.  (An interesting article discusses this topic.)

Once you have plans for construction that have been developed and approved by the local municipality, assuming you are in one, the process of construction can begin. In our area where the soil is expansive, this often begins with placement of a select fill.  In cases where soil is found to be very expansive, soil at the site of the foundation will often be removed and replaced with select fill having a significantly lower potential to expand and contract with changes in moisture content.  In most construction, a sand base is applied over the existing soil once the grass is scraped off.

FORMING PREPARATION
Once the soil at the pad site has been prepared, forming has to be installed to define the edges of the foundation to be placed.  Normally, wood or steel forming is used.  In this case, wood forming was used.  You can see the crew preparing the forming.  They started a little later in the day, and thus, it took more than one day to complete the forming which is why the lighting changes.
   

ROUGH IN PLUMBING
The plumbing rough in is completed by trenching to accommodate the plumbing drains.  Consideration must be given to ensure that the drains penetrate grade beams at mid beam or run below the beams.  If not, a reduction of beam depth or improper placement of tendons may occur.
   

PLUMBING INSPECTION
Inspection is a minor step, but I included it because it is important and visible at this stage of construction.  It also looked pretty interesting.
   

PREPARATION OF GRADE BEAMS
Grade beam trenches are dug and cleaned to create the concrete beams which will provide stiffness in the finished foundation.  Care must be taken to ensure that the soil is removed and not placed in the slab area of the foundation since the soil at the bottoms of the beams is more expansive and can reduce the effectiveness of the sand pad.

PRE-TREATMENT - At this stage of construction pre-treatment for termites is normally required by construction code.  See Hunter Pest Controls information on this subject.  Special thanks to Jesse Nugent.
 

PLACEMENT OF MOISTURE BARRIER AND TENDONS
This foundation is a post-tensioned cable reinforced concrete slab on grade foundation.  This means that the only reinforcing for the foundation is provided by cables installed in two directions in the foundation which will exert a compressive force on the concrete once it has cured and they have been tensioned.  First, a plastic moisture barrier is applied over the soil.  This acts as a friction break, capillary break, and moisture barrier to improve the structural performance of the foundation on expansive soil and reduce the potential for moisture migration through the foundation concrete.  Tendons are then applied, supported, and tied off.  Tendon placement is critical and is specified by the engineer of record, as well as the Post Tension Institute.