Foundation Adaptation

Last weekend I had an adventure adapting an 8" foundation wall to fit a window in. I rented a stihl multi saw, which is like a 2 stroke chain saw with a big 10" diameter diamond tipped concrete cutting blade on it. I needed the saw so I could cut a 6'x4' hole in the foundation wall and drop a window in it. I started the process by hammer drilling 2 holes in the bottom corners of where the window will fit in the wall.



Then I scribed lines with a level for 3 cuts. The saw only had a 4 and 1/2" clearance with the blade so I had to make a cut on the inside and outside of the wall. Fortunately the cuts on the inside and outside lined up almost perfectly.



The reason I only had to make 3 cuts was I cut to the top of the foundation wall. After the concrete is popped out of the hole my landlord is planning on framing the inside of the hole and putting in a header for the window. What these pictures do not show is the massive cloud of concrete dust that engulfed me each time I made a cut. The outside cut was manageable, but the inside cuts required serious ventilation. I could only cut inside for about 10 minutes at a time and then let the ventilation fans pull out the cloud of dust until I could cut for another 10 minutes. I tried to get some decent pictures, but on top of them being extremely difficult to tell what was happening, my camera died. Oh well. My part of this job is now over and I'm moving on to framing some windows inside my shop!