Actually they’re not sexy. I just put that in the title to try and attract some web traffic. I could have been a bit more explicit though, calling this post something like, “Sexy a$$ grade beams,” but that would be too much.

OK so anyway…we’re ready for concrete. Again! And yes, we hoped to pour this past Tuesday, but needed to wait for our special order clips and ties to arrive so the forms wouldn’t fall apart when we poured concrete. Then we were going to pour today (Friday), but the county building department was closed so we couldn’t get our inspection done.

So Monday is our day. In fact it’s probably better for Mikel since it gives him an extra day or two to get things tight.

Check out the pictures below–these are primarily of our grade beams, hence today’s sexy title. Grade beams are a concrete connection between the house and the platforms our roof support posts will sit on. Without killing you with a bunch of engineering that I would likely get wrong anyway, the idea is that it’s important (in our case) to create a strong, rigid connection between the house and posts, so that on, say, a windy day, the roof won’t start shifting the walls, or the posts, or both. With the grade beam, everything is connected. Or something.

Here’s what’s amazing to me. See the middle picture? This is the grade beam. It holds a sexy a$$load of concrete. But except for about 18 inches, the entire thing will be underground. This is one of those factors that help answer the question, “why is it so expensive to build a house?”