We were thrilled to see the foundation walls have been poured. Finally, with the weather cooperating, progress is going great. If you pour a basement foundation, the foundation walls will need to sit and cure a little bit before the next step can occur.
Foundation Time Frame – Curing
Typically, homebuilders will have a concrete foundation cure for about 7-10 days in our region, so we must practice some patience. Interestingly enough, it takes a week to get to about 60% of maximum strength for concrete and about a month to get to about 100%. While you don’t need to wait until it gets to 100% before you do other work, obviously you will have a stronger base, with less chance of cracking with the longer you wait. You can see from the photos where our egress basement window is located, and I guess they based its location after the slope of the lot. House plans for a sloping lot often include egress windows like our home design, but more often they have walk-out basements. This particular area is the lowest part of our lot, so that’s probably why the window placement is located there. Then, they can fill in around the metal enclosure easily and have a little more control over how high the ground level is in that spot in the yard.
Many people building home plans with basement foundations choose to have their foundation poured with a 9’ pour. We contemplated that, but after seeing how neat and well-planned the spec home’s unfinished basement looked, we decided the 8’ pour would be fine. The builder really did a great job tucking all pipes and electrical wiring into the rafters above in the basement. So, it will still allow for just slightly under an 8’ ceiling if we would decide to finish the basement down the road.
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I had no idea that it takes concrete about a month to reach it’s maximum strength. However, it makes sense that it has to take time to harden. Installing a basement like this is definitely something that takes a lot of patience. All the waiting would be worth it though after you are able to have a solid and stable basement.
Wow! My basement at this very mmenot looks like the photo with the floor all dug up! This is great inspration to keep plugging away although I sure hope it won’t take a year….I’ll keep buying those lotto tickets….
I didn’t know it took that long either! Great to know for the future! Concrete is more interesting than I thought!
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