THE NEW HOUSE – Episode 2 … on broken ground

 

The new house will sit in an open space near the garage with a great view of the lake. The stakes show the corners of the building. The house really looks small when you lay it out like this – but they are larger when built. Taller too! We received approval for the site plan from the county, so we notified our excavation guy and the foundation folks, that we’re ready to start the project. We’re off to the races!

In the distance, you can barely see the stumps for the two huge douglas fir trees we took down in front of the house to mill for lumber (next post).

On Thursday, Brant Bailey with Hanson Logging brought out his Case 500 backhoe and we broke ground around 10am.

 

I “helped” a little moving the top soil to a pile separate from the loam. I think it would take 5 of my loads to fill his loader bucket.

 

The top soil is about 3’ deep then we hit clay/loam which will make a pretty good base for the foundation. not great drainage, but solid.

 

After two days work we basically have a level pad 48’ wide x 26’ deep, with an area for the walkout.

 

The house’s basement will be “walkout” style, meaning we’ll have a flat area outside the basement and be able to walk out the basement sliding doors to a patio.

You never know how things are going to look until you do final grading, but we we originally hoping for the flat area outside the basement to remain flat toward the lake… but we don’t have enough grade for that, so we’ll need to have a lowered area surrounded by a rockery. (Similar to brother Dave and Sue’s).

The night Brant finished his second day of excavating, we got a call from the foundation folks (Norvell
Concrete) that they would be available on Monday to start work… yikes!  Brant has about another 1/2 day of work to complete on Monday, but having them both there will really make sure the grading done works well for the foundation footings.

 

next post: Milling logs to Lumber