Its now mid-February and construction could go no further without having cement pads poured for the back and front porch, and slabs poured in the living room and garage. Unfortunately the ground is completely frozen in Minnesota at this time so the cement contractor had to bring in insulated blankets with heaters underneath (either hot glycol or water tubing). The photo below is from the garage. They let it run for 4-5 days before bringing in a crew to build cement forms and start pouring.
Here is a look at some of the results!
We are especially happy with the look of the slab on grade concrete floor is being used on two-thirds of the main living space. It will be brushed concrete as a final finish and is meant to act as a thermal mass to both absorb sunlight to supply a portion of heat during the winter and absorb and store internally supplied energy to even out temperature swings. There is 4 inches of rigid insulation (R-20 total) under the slab to retain the heat that gets put into the slab. We were not so happy with the first application of the Tyvek, there was a ton of staples and half of it blew off in a wind storm (50 mph) we had over a weekend when contractors were not there. We even had to chase down a bundle of rigid insulation that had blown from the build site. The Tyvek will be reapplied in the siding stage with less staples, with added taping.