Excavation & Foundation

Last week excavation was finished and the foundation was started.

Yuval took a great composite picture of the completed excavation:


Then surveyors were brought back for a very precise placement of the foundation. The precision is to within a small fraction of an inch; apparently the city can hassle you if the foundation is off by even one inch.

Then the forms for the footings were started. All these forms will be put in, then precisely aligned, and then the footings will be poured. Much of that will take place over the next week.

I captured a few pictures of the lower parts of the form.


And the timelapse:


The position isn't so great for capturing the foundation work, so there's not a lot to see later in the week. However, since the dirt-moving is finished for now, Yuval will move the camera to a better position. It will be at the top or bottom of the site, so it can get a nice view of the foundation as it goes in.

Excavation (Almost) Complete

This past week was all about moving dirt. The majority of our site was excavated, resulting in a big hole in the ground. Some of the dirt was piled at the bottom of the construction zone, some was moved to the lot just up-hill of us, and some of trucked off-site.

Quite a bit of dirt has been removed compared to the ground level:

A bit more action this week on the timelapse (note the back-hoe sinking in to the dirt pile at the end of the day!):

There is maybe one day left on excavation, and then the forms for the foundation will start going in.

Construction Started

After many months of work, we have finally broken ground on our new house! Last week excavation equipment was brought in to start work. The first task was to clear the lot and grade it in preparation for digging space for the foundation.

Up until recently, our lot looked something like this:

But with more cut-down trees and some blackberry and grass growing all around.

When we stopped by last weekend, it looked like this:

All the junk and extra dirt in the main area of the lot has been cleared away. The lines sketched in are roughly were the foundation will be. The first picture in particular shows where the stair tower will jut out at the bottom of the slope.

We also have a timelapse camera set up to record the construction process. Here's the video of the first few days of work.

As you can see, our camera placement was sub-optimal, and it was nearly buried! We moved it south, so it will hopefully stay out of the way, and get better footage.

Now that construction is under way, we'll try to provide more regular posts. Every week or so we'll post a few pictures, a short description of what has happened, and a short timelapse video of the work. We hope you enjoy following along with us.