Week 5 - Excavation

We are still behind by about two weeks but otherwise things seem to be proceeding apace with digging for the garage, the driveway, the foundation and some sort of big earthquake mass which is supposed to anchor the addition.

This week all the hole which were begun last week became, basically, bigger and deeper holes. The biggest one being for the garage/driveway which will be a little below street level when it is finished and exposes almost half the foundation on this side of the house.

Every day something new appeared. When the holes for the footings were right, the forms and rebar went together and, throughout the week, the driveway got steadily lower.

Eventually the front footings were defined ...

... and activity moved around to the driveway side. Once the excavation got low enough, the front side wall of the basement was removed using the backhoe. It involved a lot of very impressive banging and crashing. But the house didn't fall down or tilt dramatically to the northwest (only a minor concern), so that's good.

Unfortunately toward the end of the week it began to rain again. Since the excavation is down well past the topsoil and into clay, this means a lot of very fine, very sticky, dangerously slick mud. It also means a lot of water in inconvenient places. We jury rigged the roof gutter to take at least some water away from the work area.

By the end of the week, the driveway/garage area was down close to where it needed to be and footing forms were going in there as well.

The view from the front is very different now ...

... than it was at the start of the project.

Week 6 - The Footings