Putting One Footer in Front of Another

Building materials!

It was exciting to see rebar and lumber on the lot on Monday.  That was surely a sign of big things about to happen.

I peered down in the hole and saw plans being consulted,

and stakes being caefully measured and placed.

Tuesday morning things were really a flurry of activity.

Jason was back, rearranging a bit of dirt, the outline of the house was nearly complete and the footers were being dug out.

Parts of the scene looked a bit like an archaeological dig.

I didn't know that they would stair step the retaining walls.  I thought they would follow the slope.  Apparently this is a better method.  I guess it is stronger if all the force vectors are pointing straight down with no horizonal component encouraging the wall to slide on down the hill.

All these trenches looked so much like a maze that I found myself yearning for a couple of little boys, a minotaur toy and a ball of string.

Today there will be more digging and then they'll begin to put in the rebar.  I thought the concrete would go in once the footings were dug, but there is a lot more work to do. Also the first structural inspection has to happen.  The prep work has to be inspected before the concrete can be poured.

Drawing a Line in the Clay

Tuesday saw the last of the dump trucks. 

20 more loads with a bit set to the side for saftety, and the basement was dug.

There were a few interesting rock layers in the dirt, but no really big rocks.

One worry I had was that we would hit a big granite outcropping when digging the basement.

We had almost no rock.  We all guessed that would be the case, given the size of the trees we removed. But still, I had the nagging worry of what to do with a big granite blob in the middle of the basement.

No more worrying about that! Whew!

The footer guys came out yesterday and staked out the footers for the basement.  They had a reference stake on the front yard to measure everything off of.  The stake was the surveying equivalent of Greenwich Mean Time for our lot.  Here they are pulling a measurement off of GMT.

They had this enormously tall level to make sure they didn't get erroneous measurements.  The fellow with the level would make sure all the bubbles were centered and then the fellow at GMT would tell him how much to move the level to achieve the correct distance.  Such clever tools!

By the end of the day, they had staked out where the footers need to be.  Now we just have to get our surveyor back out to make absolutely certain we are where we think we are and don't have any walls in the set back.

You've got to start off on a good footing, afer all.

Gettin' Down and Dirty

On Wednesday, I saw the most beautiful sight I had seen in a long time:

I was so excited to see a real, life sized dump truck on the lot!

Unfortunately, the driver misunderstood and thought he was the object of my enthusiasm.

Word got around and the other driver thought he'd better check his look in the side mirror.

Lookin' good, Billy Ray! (Feelin' good, Louis....)

I thought I'd better turn my focus elsewhere.  I didn't want to start anything.  We have enough dirt on this job as it is.

My excitement was so understandable, though.  After a week or so of trying to sell the dirt, we thought we had a home for it.  Only the people who said they wanted it kept leading us on and playing games.  First it was too wet, then they failed an inspection, and finally didn't have the necessary equipment delivered.  Good ol' Gary the Builder Dirt Broker got back in his trusty pickup and made the rounds again.  A house site that hadn't been quite ready when he went by before was now ready to back fill a retaining wall.

These good gentleman showed up and started hauling.

They hauled.

And they hauled.

The pace was a little slow on our end, but they had to use the "whacker packer" on the dirt as it came in at the other end.  So, Ol' Mike Mulligan here was kinda chillin' as he dug.

He does kinda look like Mike Mulligan, don't you think?

The whole scene was sort of reminiscent of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, except that this Mike stayed on top of the hill and didn't dig himself into the basement.

Time for a pop quiz! 

What was the name of Mike Mulligan's steam shovel?

Hmmm?

No cheating.  I'll tell you at the end of this post.

At any rate, by the end of the second day and the 54th dump truck load of dirt, these nice folks  trucks belched (politely) and declared that they had a gracious sufficiency.

(They're southern folk -- that's what you say!)

Problem was, we still had all this dirt yet to dig:

So, who do you think came riding to the rescue in his white truck named Silver?

That's right!  Gary the Builder Dirt Broker found another site - a commercial site - that needed good compactable red dirt to top off their grading job. Doesn't this look like the finest compactable red dirt that money can buy?  And if it's free -- just bring your own truck -- doesn't it become even more desirable?  Yes!

So, by Friday, we had 5 trucks coming and going hauling somewhere around 80 or 90 truck loads away.  That kept ol' Mike Mulligan and his trusty **Mary Ann** busy all day.

We probably still have more loads to haul off, but tomorrow, we will shape up the backyard and do some calculations to see how much dirt we need and how much we still have left.

Now time to check your answers.  How many of you had Mary Ann as your answer?  You can post it in the comments below.  If you had a boy's name as the answer, you have some remedial reading to do!

Down in the Dumps

Finally, today there was a dump truck on the lot.

And there was another (this one looks a little worse for the wear).

In fact there were 3 dump trucks, as promised, lined up and waiting to be loaded with dirt.

But there seems to be a problem.

The dump truck is much, much too small for the trac hoe.

What has happened?

I think I know:

Like the hard red clay

Baking in the Georgia sun,

 I have -at last- cracked.

A little haiku for you as I wait to see if we will actually be able to bring real dump trucks out to the site tomorrow and dig a real basement.

Totally Floored

Today I was totally floored.

Not only did builder Gary find someone who wants our excess dirt,

(insert Halleluja Chorus)

but Drew also sent me pictures as he began to cut our logs into flooring.

Here are our logs. Remember the Wicked Witch green sealer on the ends?  The orange machine in the upper left is Drew's portable saw mill.

Here's another view with the logs in the background, the saw mill, boards for flooring and then scrap.

That's all just from the first log!

In addition to all the flooring, the first log also yielded a bit of hardware.  Drew assumed it was a screw eye for a hammock, but I told him that it could have been a tie up for the horses 40 years or so ago.  Anyone want to venture a guess whether it was horses or a hammock?

Drew also sent examples of rift sawing (above) and quarter sawing (below).

See the swirls (or figure as wood snobs call it) in the quarter sawn boards?

We will have a mix of rift sawn and quarter sawn to make maximum use of the logs.

By the end of the day, Drew had  made all these flooring blanks.

I tell you, he just can't help himself.  Here he goes again with the math.  First on the trees themselves and now on the boards.

I guess that means that the stack represents 527 sq feet of flooring.

So, with flooring piling up and dump trucks lined up, it's time to dig a basement!

Many thanks and a big photo credit to Drew Leviton for today's pictures.

Entrenched and Waiting

We're not waiting for an ambush.

We're waiting for someone who needs dirt.

Our cut and fill calculations indicated that we would have just enough excess dirt to "waste" around the bottoms of the retaining walls.  It seems that we will have about 10 times that, so we must find a home for it.

It's kind of like match making, but dirtier.

We're talking about all of this dirt all the way back to the ribbons.

We must keep it all contained within the "boundaries of construction," so piling it off to the side is not really an option. 

There is simply no room.

Got dirt?

Want about 35 dump truck loads?

It's a Stake Out!

Gary went back today and staked the back corners of the house and connected the dots for me.  It's starting to look like the outline of a house.  Of course, it also looks like a drunk laid it out with all the ins and outs.  But those are all the features that add so much (to the appeal and the cost)! 

The design team came out to have a look and give everything their blessing. 

They compared the plans to the stakes, marveled at how different the lot looks, and took pictures.

You've already met Gary, now here is the design part of Team 3375.  On the left we have Graham Pittman, landscape architect and author of the site plan.  Then we have Denise Johnson and Justeen Oess of Justeen Oess Architects, who designed our house.  It was great to have them out on the lot and see the progress.  It looks a lot more like a house site than when they all first came out.

In the end we all decided that everything looked good, but we would shift the house two feet to the north (left looking at it from the street) to give us a little ease.  ~Why is "Time Warp" from the Rocky Horror Picture Show running through my head? "It's just a step to the left..."~

This is pretty much the view from the front door back to the street right now.

And this is the view toward the front of the house.

In the background, you can see the feature that every house should have:

a dirt pile!

All you really need in life is one good friend, a dog and a dirt pile.

Anyone up for a quick game of King of the Mountain?