water proofing

The cement has been allowed to cure for a week and now the waterproofing is applied. Not sure if this is really needed as the ground shows no sign of moisture but this is not a representative for moisture. Better safe than sorry.

Took under an hour but not a job I aspire too. To many chemicals.

Similar pictures to the pouring of the footings, the main difference is the scaffolding (sp?) put up. Pretty shaky but the workers do not seem to mind. As you can see there are many warnings on the pumper truck and the cement trucks.

If you ever decide to enter the cement delivery business I would reccomend the driver of the pumper; they show up first and use the remote control box to controlthe boom and flow of cement.!

Form Form and more forms

The forms are finalized and the pouring begins. How many cubic yards? We do not know but will find out and pots

foundation wall form

On Thursday and Friday 3-15 and 3-16 the forms for the walls are being put up. The goal is to have everything done for the walls to be poured on Monday 3-19.

Compaction and footings

All of the compaction was completed y 2pm Tuesday 3-13 and the testing company performed 9 test areas and got readins from 95.5 to 99! We are all excited about about this and everyone was able to get home early. Well not everyone as the civil engineers came at 6 to stake the foundation on last time. Yes again they will pound stakes just to have them ripped out in the morning after the footing folks perform their measurements.

At 7:50am on Wednesday 3-14 the footing folks arrived and everyone got busy as the county inspector was to show up at 11:30 and all rebar and forms needed to be place. Well the county inspector showed up at 11 and everything was ready and easily signed off.

While all this is happening the cement pump truck shows up and get ready. The cement truck drives, electronically lowers the chute and they start pumping concrete.

The rebar is set 2 foot centers to allow for walls up to 10 foot and the measuring tool is simple; a stake with marks that layed out, a mark made in the cement and the rebar is set in! Who needs those stinking satellites!

There are a bunch of peope involved, one to run the pumper via remote controls, a person to aim the cement delivery hose, one to hold the rebar in place, one to rough smooth the cement after initial pour, one to further smooth the cement after 2-3 minutes of settling, one to final trowel the cement smooth, one to mark the 2 foot centers and one to place the vertical rebar.

When the trucks are lined it goes fast but the trucks are late everyone sits around and waits, throws rocks, looks for dear on the hill side or strategizes on how they can capture thewild turkeys!

The forms are removed 4 hours later and the job is done. It sounds like the foundation wall forms will start to be set on Thursday.

Monday 3-12 update

The weather is looking promising for the week and we are optomistic on making great progress. Yes the digging and compacting continues. The compacting is done to ensure the foundation will be on stable ground, there is much expansive mud and water in these hills.

The area where the foundation footings are going to go has to have at least 18 inches of 95% compacted fill. It is done in two layers or lifts (those code words again). A company comes and checks the compaction amount with this fancy machine that scares me because it is stamped radioactive!

All compacting is done and final compacting test should be done Tuesday afternoon around 3pm.

They dig, re-dig, re-stake, dig some more

On Friday 3-09 the tarps were removed and more digging was done after canals were made to allow the water to drain out. We got almost 3/4 of an inch of rain and it is muddy!

The complete foundation has been dug and the engineers have to come back to restake the exact location of the building corners so that the footing locations can be marked and dug. The footings must have 18+ inches of 95% compacted fill material.

This staking process is pretty amazing to me. The engineers come in with fancy GPS equipment and a site map illustrating building corners that are uniquely numbered. These numbers have been loaded into the GPS. This is the GPS unit. The foundation hole has been dug oversized and house corners will be marked. Then the excavaters measure and mark the footing locations and then they dig out the footings wiping out the stakes that were just put in! Seems to me that there has to be a more efficent way.

To get into the tight areas a mini backhoe was brought onsite. To compact the driveway area and eventually the ground where the basement and garage slab will go a compactor will be used. The compactor is remote controlled and I hope I get to take it for a spin.

The geotechnical engineer came by the site and approved the digging and footing approach. Next week we wll have to have the compaction engineer, different company, come and inspect the material and certify in writing that 95% compaction is achieved. All of this could have been avoided if we did not have a geo technical report done but we wanted to determine if there was the presenece of expansive clays before we started digging. Better safe than sorry.

Rain again Friday night, we are hoping everything dries out for Monday. Hoping for footings Wednesday and then foundation forms by Thursday.

Thursday update ...

It rained hard most of the night and early morning. The backhoe operator is sick so no earth movement today. The civil engineers need to restake the hole so exact determination of locations for the footings will be marked. Also the hole had to be 'stepped' to ensure that they were able to get below the frost line. This means that we will have to fill with gravel or other materal.

With the stakes in place we can minimize the amount of fill.

Yes the hole is a muddy mess.

Oh yeah, the driveway has been cut and covered with base and compacting has begun.

We are hoping for the footings to be done by Wednesday 3/14.

The movement of earth continues

No problems have been encountered so far, just the normal (as we have been told) decisions that need to be made. The dirt is covered with blankets to ensure the ground will not freeze if it gets cold at night. The hole is being over excavated to allow for the twisting of the foundation if we decide we want to move it to ensure we take advantage of the view.

The dig begins ....

Well it started, the dig has begun Monday March 5, 2007. We are hopeful the weather will cooperate and we can get some momentum. Here is the first bucket of dirt being moved.

We went skiing with friends from Iowa and returned to see this much done. The builder thought that they would have it dug out in one day but it appears we got the 'slow' back hoe operator.

Temperature swings ...

It is March and in UT you expect dramatic weather swings. 2 feet of snow on Thursday/Friday, 12 below zero on Saturday morning but mid-20's in the afternoon. It is forecasted to be in 30's Sunday and 40's and higher through mid-week.

With the bright sun, metal roof on the house, and warm temperatures in the afternoons we have interesting ice formations occuring. Here are a couple of pictures trying to capture nature's work.

Let it snow ....

As mentioned in a prior post we pushed out the beginning of the dig one week due to forcasted storms and colder weather. On Thursday 3/1 it start to snow and Friday morning we woke to almost 2 feet of snow. Mick is having a blast with the deep snow and it wears him out!

Since Mick likes to catch and eat snow we decided to give him a treat!

After dealing with the county and determining not to relocate the house stakes we went skiing to relax and enjoy the powder. Here is Elsa enjoying the new snow!

Dealing with the county

We are building in the unicorporated area of Weber County, UT. The process for obtaining a building permit is well documented - we followed them to a "T" and obtained the permit in early December 2006.

Our builder was contacted and was told that the county engineering department was reviewing our lot to see if an identified drainage easement, which only requires a 20 foot set back, is actually a stream. A stream can require a 50 or 75 foot set back!


WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You can imagine that Elsa and I were confused and upset at this last minute issue. We spoke at length to the county planner and learned that a new ordinance was passed a year or so ago and the review process for building permits was not adequate enough so they changed the process and were reviewing all recently issued permits for conformity. The county engineers were scheduled to meet us at the lot on Friday morning at 9:30 to review the situation and provide us with decision.

Why is this decision so important? We planned the placement and layout of the house based on the lot topography and the view of the valley and mountains. If the drainage easement is determined to be a non-year round stream then the setback requirement would be 50 feet which we could deal with by moving the house less than 5 feet *but* we would not be able to put any type of structure in that 50 foot setback, including a tool shed. While we have no plans to do anything at this point we would like to have our options open.

If it is determined to be a year round stream then the setback would be 75 feet. This would cause major problems and possibly require us completely redesign the house! Can you say ten's of thousands of additional expense?!

We met the engineers and after 30 minutes of discussion and walking the lot and uphill areas the senior engineer determined that the drainage area is just that and it is *NOT* a stream. We will be sure to get this in writing!

So, now we can proceed with our original plans. Stay tuned to see if we start digging on Monday March 6th

Hurry up and wait

The builder and excavating folks were scheduled to start digging the foundation on Monday Februaury 26th. As we had mentioned to numerous folks the snow would start to fall when we staked the lot. Be careful what you ask for as it snowed on Suunday and there are 2-3 storms lined up for the rest of the week. While snow itself is not a large problem the temperatures at night are the focus. Once the hole is dug the foundation footings need to be poured and Steve does not want the temperatures below 20 degrees as it can make the cement brittle.

Everyone got together and decided to push the start date to Monday March 5th.

more progress

We were hiking in the hills around the neighborhood and noticed a truck pulling a trailer with a earth digger on it! The truck had driven more than 1/2 mile past the lot looking for a place to turn around and must have decided it was futile as s/he had started to back down the road!

Later in the day we went to the lot and found this. Wonder if they will provide lessons so I can help with the dig.

Staking the lot

On Thursday our building lot was staked, show exact house placement, by the engineering company. The person in the foreground is our builder Steve Young, Solitude Builders http://www.solitudebuilders.com/and the other guys are the engineers.

They use a hand held GPS based device that provides accuracy within 2 to 3 inches. This device uses a standard hand held GPS similar to what any consumer can buy but also utilizes a base stations that provides triangulation measurements! Got to love technology