The waterproofing crew came up to our new house on Monday morning. I was thinking of doing it myself, but ultimately decided to let an experienced crew do it because they could complete the work quickly. And it was quick. They were done by mid-afternoon Monday.
The waterproofing consists of a sprayed-on, rubberized membrane. A dimpled plastic panel was adhered to the tacky membrane to provide a path for liquid water to drain down the side of the foundation walls. Here one of the crew is attaching the panels to the top of the sprayed area.
I used a little poetic license for the title of this post. The waterproofing looks like the tar that was rolled on for waterproofing in the past, but it’s really not the same.
A French drain was installed at the base of the foundation wall. It’s different from what I expected. It’s flat, with a rectangular cross section placed on the footing. It may not be strictly necessary, but I might add some standard perforated tubes in the excavated area beside the footing to help drain any water that accumulates there.
A bed of coarse gravel will be dumped in beside the foundation, and then the rest of the opening will be filled with dirt.
Tuesday morning neighbor John met with me and the power company engineer and we decided on where to put the trench for the electrical power supply. Earlier John had rented a trenching attachment for his skid-steer loader.
It didn’t take too long for him and his helper to get a good start.
They’re just about ready to bear over onto the nice stand of winter rye that Sylvester was prowling through in the Friday Felines post. That grass is now history.
The power company requires a minimum depth of two feet. That was mostly fairly easy to achieve, but there were a few large boulders that limited the depth. Fortunately they were in areas where we can fill around the trench to get our required depth.
The power company engineer was a little concerned about digging the trench too far in advance of when they could lay the power cable, but I assured him it was not supposed to rain, and if it did, the trench wouldn’t fill with mud.
I watched John work for a while and then left to get a few groceries. While I was at the grocery store, John texted me a video of heavy rain falling on the mountain. Just as I got back up to our new driveway, John was leaving. He told me that part of the trench had filled with mud and his skid-steer was stuck with about 20 more feet to trench.
It doesn’t look like it here, but John said he can’t get the loader out of the mud. The trencher looks and works like a huge chainsaw designed to cut earth.
We measured about a quarter of an inch of rain, with a little more later in the evening. We got a total of about a third of an inch, not much, but enough to make a pretty good mess of the trench.
I’m not sure how we’re going to handle the silted-in trench, or how John is going to be able to get his loader unstuck. I have a narrow transplanting shovel that will probably just about fit into the trench. If I do any of the shoveling, I’ll probably have to let Leah hose me off before I can even think about coming back inside the house.
Depending on how things go Wednesday morning, the electrician may be able to get the temporary power post up and get an inspection. If that happens, we may be able to get the power company to lay their line in the trench and get power to the construction site this week.
One of the totally irrelevant things I remember about the burying of lines and plumbing from the well (24 years ago) was that the implement of destruction was called a Ditch Witch.
At any rate, the line from the well has never frozen, so that worked. They buried the phone line from the take off pole up by the road 600 feet away, but the power line comes in above ground in the usual way until it gets to a power pole about 100′ from the house. It takes off to the house underground and enters the house about 3′ above ground.
We’ve only had to have the phone line repaired twice in more than two decades Once was my fault, shearing it while putting in some posts for a garden. The other time was a lightning strike a few years ago, up at the road, that fried five of our neighbors’ lines as well. We’ve had a few more problems with trees, etc, and one blown transformer (squirrel) with the above ground power line.
We’ve only had one problem with lightning strikes blowing out utilities, and that was the submersible well pump. Never had a problem with inside electronics, and I attribute that to the buried power line, and low entry into the house. Our neighbors next door, on the other hand, have their power connection at the top of the house. They’ve had numerous computers and other appliances blown out over the years, mostly by lightning. I’m a big fan of burying power and phone lines, though it isn’t a total problem solver.
One thing I did while the electric company crew was out for a repair was to ask them to mark the underground route. I took polaroids (no cheap digital cameras then!) of the paint splotches, and they’ve served me well where locations were ambiguous.
(Of course, a landline phone line is no longer of importance to a great many residences, but we still have to maintain the bare minimum for DSL purposes.)
Wayne — Six hundred feet is a long way, but of course you’re out in the country. Our driveway is probably 300 feet. The power company engineer and the electrician wanted to put a pole about halfway up the drive and then go underground, but I didn’t want to look at a utility pole right in the view across the valley for the rest of our lives. Our current service is underground, but we’re not far from a pole here. We suffered our first electrical damage in April while we were in Denver. One set of HDMI inputs on our television stopped working, apparently because of a lightning strike. I don’t know whether it came in over the phone line or the power line. We have satellite TV, so I don’t see how that could be the problem. We are thinking about not having a landline in the new house since we hardly use our phone. We can’t get DSL, but we do have it hooked up to our alarm service and the satellite box. I think we can work around that in the new house.
I am definitely going to document the placement of the underground service.
Sorry to hear about that heavy rain. Things were going so well. We are starting to think about buying a small lot here because the housing market is so incredibly dismal. Reading your posts have been enlightening about how to proceed and what we might expect in getting things started. Hope the weather behaves and progress continues!
Looks like I’ve found a sure-fire way to ensure I get enuf rain to keep my lake full. Just dig a ditch that needs to remain dry for a while and — bingo! — rain will fall.
Robin — Building a house can be very rewarding and very demanding. Having a general contractor can save a lot of grief, since general contractors are usually far more familiar with what needs to be done and when. But doing it yourself is a lot cheaper. Depending on your particular inspection department, an owner-builder may be given more lenienciy.
Pablo — You may have something. Wednesday started with clear, blue skies, so John and his helper retrenched (making the driveway into a muddy mess). By the time we got home from the dentist’s office in the afternoon, it was sprinkling again. And the forecast is for more rain tonight.