More good septic news

Or at least, it would seem so. When I got the soil report last week, there were a number of things that had to change. I asked for priority handling, so we could have the actual report back in our hands yesterday. Since I'd had no news, I phoned them yesterday. Karine apologized for it not being ready. Once I explained that we were hoping to arrange it so we could get visits for submissions later this week, she asked who we were going to be dealing with and said she would fax it out, with changes, to the municipality and those contractors. Although they haven't kept promises in the past, I thought it best to call the contractors and let them know it was coming. They both said call us Thursday, and we'll come by Thursday night. I told them to bring their bug spray.

So after some discussion back and forth, the thermal mass wall process has been decided on. We're going to build as high as we can with the blocks we have, using the concrete adhesive we bought. We bought rebar, and will fill all the holes with cement, reinforcing two vertical channels with rebar. We'll skip the surface bonding cement, as the concrete filling of the holes will form channels of solid concrete that will ensure stability. We may even build a collar and top everything off with a slab of concrete, depending on how much we have. We'll steel-stud frame the top portion to the ceiling then cover front and back with cementboard, screwed into the block wall with Tapcons. The wall will be inflammable, and won't be going anywhere.

I'm still toying with a couple solutions for getting the half-blocks we'll need. Get a blade and cut them ourselves, or bring them to someone to cut them for us. Need to find a mason for that, though.

We'll also fill the gap between the base and the wall with concrete, so we have a good solid and level base for the wall ties to rest on. Of all of this, the thing that I view as the biggest challenge is laying the tile itself. I have never used thinset mortar, nor buttered the back of tiles, so this process is totally new. I am confident in my ability to learn how to do it well, but it's still the unknown.

Which reminds me, I had better read up on the specifics and save it to my hard drive as the internet will be miles away when I'm into the project.