Planning for the foundation.

Once the gravel pad was complete, I had some time to get ready for the foundation job. I had made arrangements and agreed upon a start time with a local concrete contractor months before - yet for a variety of reasons nothing really happened until almost a full month after the proposed start date. Once the concrete guys got going things moved along pretty well... they started work after the first week of July and were finished during the first week of August. I have always been pleased with the quality of the work they did but my blood pressure goes up still when I think back on the time that was wasted waiting around.

During that time I fabricated a set of forks for my tractor - this would prove to be time not wasted.

Home-made forks. I saved the actual two forks from rusting
 away behind the farm co-op down the road. The rest was
fabbed out of pieces of scrap from my brother-in-law's back
 yard.

Working off the architect's foundation plan, I also produced some drawings and graphics to help explain to the contractor how I thought he should go about constructing the foundation - this would also prove to be time not wasted.

The foundation design was done by our architect Walter and achieves all the things that I was looking for -  FPSF foundation that was "fully wrapped" in insulation.  Being that the foundation was to be of the FPSF variety and also a walk-out, the profile resembles a slab on grade for the walk-out portion - except that the footings were poured first and the slab poured over the footings like a lid. The reasoning here was that it is difficult to compact the fill under a conventional "club footing" since the inside face of the footing is at an angle. Also, by pouring the slab over a more conventional footing, it would be easier to insulate around the footing and we would avoid the usual cracking of the concrete where a more traditional club footing changes thickness. The following images omit the forms but show the construction sequence for the foundation at the slab edge:

Here is a sketch I made to to show how the forms should be set up for the footings. Since
the rigid insulation shown in the sketch was to be included in the formwork, its dimensions
 had to be accounted for. The only changes made in the field were to go to an 18" form for
 the exterior perimeter forms and I cut the insulation boards down to 12" (and shimmed
them up an inch off the ground) to minimize waste. Note that the exterior perimeter form is
taller than the footings because these forms will also act as the slab forms later - so
reducing the form height from 19" to 18" yielded a 5" slab instead of a 6" slab.

Where a full height concrete wall was required, it would be poured on top of the slab with vertical rebar tying the wall to the footings through the slab. Sounds complicated, but it worked out to be pretty straight-forward:

This image gives a general idea of what I mean by pouring the wall on top
of the slab.