It seems the best sunsets we see are while driving back home from the grocery store. This was Friday night. It’s the best I could get with my phone from the car.

On the home front, we are now ready to get an inspection of the plumbing that will be beneath the basement slab. The plumber came up last week with a helper to dig the shallow trenches necessary to get the pipes beneath the slab and with the correct slope. Shallow or not, the trench was hard to dig with hand tools. I watched for a while, and then a few days later, had a go at it myself for a smaller pipe to serve as a drain for condensate from the air conditioner and the backflush from the water softener we’ll install. The bottom of the basement excavation lies within the rock layer we hit a few feet beneath the surface. The rock is not particularly hard, but it’s exhausting to dig through it.

We’re having the plumber rough in lines for a bathroom in the basement, but we will almost certainly never finish it. That will be for the next owners. The rest of the lines are drains for the two upstairs bathrooms, the washing machine and the kitchen.

The lines are prepared for inspection by putting in a fairly tall stack at the main drain line, capping all the inlets or outlets, and then filling the lines with water. I brought up about 35 gallons in a tank I filled at our house and we strung a hose between the truck, parked in what will be the garage, and the pipe.

This is a shot I got holding my phone out as far as I could reach over the rear foundation wall, which has not yet been backfilled. It was kind of a stretch.

The sanitary lines are mostly buried. The pipes lying on the ground are the inch-and-a-half lines I’ll put in for the AC and water softener drains. The tank you can see is the same size we’re draining from, but we didn’t use much from it. It’s a lot easier to let a hose carry the water instead of hoisting it up in a five-gallon bucket.

The first filling drained out overnight from a joint in the lines. The plumber came back up the next day and repaired the leak. We refilled the lines and there were no apparent leaks. When I came back up the next day, however, the water had dropped about five feet in the tall stack. There was still no apparent leak. I refilled it, and it has held for two days. I have made the assumption that whatever happened (a tall deer with a long tongue drank it?), it seems to have corrected itself.

I called the inspection department Friday afternoon and arranged for an inspection sometime Monday. I will check the pipe Saturday and Sunday just to make sure, but I think it will be OK. Once we pass this inspection, the next step will be preparation and pouring the basement slab. That is the critical step after which framing can start.

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.

The foundation crew put up forms for our poured foundation walls on Tuesday, May 12. Leah and I walked up to look Tuesday evening. Standing inside the basement-to-be, Leah thought the house looked small, but that’s normal. In my experience, a house under construction goes through stages when it looks too small or too large before it finally looks like exactly the size it is.

Late Wednesday afternoon, after the building inspector gave his OK, the concrete was poured. When I walked up to the lot around 2:30, the crew said the first concrete truck was expected around three. The pump truck was already there, idling in the middle of what will one day be our basement.

Three came and went, as did four. A little after four pm, the crew boss arrived and said the first concrete truck had overheated and had to stop at the base of the mountain, and then, after cooling for a while, overheated again about halfway up.

Every hour the pump truck was in transit or on site, even while idle, costed around $135.

It was nearly 5 pm before the first concrete truck finally arrived. The crew didn’t waste any time getting started.

In case anyone is not familiar with how these things work, the concrete truck (with the blue stripe), dumps its mix into a hopper (right behind the “TAYLOR-MADE’ logo on the pump truck). A pump then sends the concrete up the long boom and out the heavy flexible hose the worker is holding over the form.

Concrete has to be agitated in these 10-foot-deep forms to make sure there are no voids. The crew used a electric, flexible, vibrating rod powered by a generator. The motor is on the end to the right, and the business end is on the left.

He dips it deep into the concrete and it does its thing.

I took some more documentary pictures, but I was ready to leave after about 45 more minutes. As long as I move, my back is fine, but if I stand around for any length of time, it starts to hurt. Standing for more than two hours was enough, so I told the crew boss I was going home. Besides, Leah had put beer in the freezer so we could have a really cold one, and I was ready for that.

Here’s a shot as I left. The boom operator has the boom controls hanging at his waist so he can stand where he can see what’s going on.

Pump trucks are a life-saver for concrete pours. Without one, a concrete foundation like ours would be impractical for a typical homeowner.

The third of five trucks was waiting for me at the bottom of our driveway when I left. Leah and I were at home when we saw the last piece of equipment turn around at Wildlife Trail at around 6 pm.

The crew will come back Thursday (today) to remove the forms. Pretty soon after that, I hope, another crew will come to waterproof the foundation. Based on the estimate, the material alone would account for half the cost, and I’m not sure how easily I could get the right materials. So that’s one job I had intended to do, but won’t.

While I was waiting for the pour to start, an engineer from Georgia Power came by to talk about temporary power. I have to get someone to dig a trench for the underground service up to the temporary service post, and I have to get an electrician to get the inspection and provide some of the equipment. We’re setting the date for that around the end of the month, but I hope to get it done sooner.

Concurrent with that, I need to get a plumber to put in the drain pipe that goes below the basement slab and out to the septic system. That has to be done before the basement slab is poured, and the slab has to be poured before framing can start.

Framing is the biggest part of making a house under construction look like an actual house, so we’re looking forward to that.

We took the first concrete step in our house construction Wednesday – we had the footings poured. This is the first time anything has actually been constructed, as opposed to removed.

I watched the crew putting the forms in place Tuesday. Neighbor John was there part of the time. He said his dozer operator had a close call earlier on the mountainous pile of dirt at the corner of the house site. If you look carefully, you might be able to see where the tracks lead off towards the house site from the path he wore up and down the slope. That’s where he came close to turning the dozer over.

But all turned out OK.

We’re going to have a sound foundation for our house. Often in this part of the country, footings can be formed by simply digging a nice, square trench in the ground. In our case, however, the footing forms had to be built from two-by-fours held in place with stakes and rebar. Getting the rebar into the ground required using a power drill. The surface was too hard to drive a piece of rebar into the ground with a small sledge.

Notice that the guy with the drill is wearing a long-sleeved shirt and a cloth around his neck. This was not because it was cold. The temperature was in the 80s. But this worker, who has been with this crew for about 15 years, knows how to dress for bright, sunny weather. (Once when I was visiting a friend in New Mexico, he told me that in the summer you can tell the tourists from the natives because the tourists are the ones wearing short-sleeved shirts.)

The footing crew finished their forms Tuesday and arranged the footing inspection for Wednesday morning. We passed, so the pour started around 1 pm.

Here’s the overall scene as the pour progressed.

I made this image using our new camera’s panorama function, all done in the camera. I was standing on top of the dirt mountain. This shot shows the entire foundation, including basement and garage.

There is a large step up from the basement level to the garage level in the corner. That’s where the pour started.

The footing guy ordered dry, or stiff mix because the concrete had to stay within the tall form in the corner and not run out at the bottom. That made it a little hard to get out of the mixer at first.

This is the next-to-the-last corner of the footing, leading up to the front of the house.

The crew had just finished the first six yards of concrete and had the second truck pull up to start dumping the next load. I’m guessing that the first six yards did about two thirds of the total footing.

The next step is have the foundation wall forms set up, and then get the next concrete pour. I’m not sure when that will happen, but before that happens I expect to have found all the materials necessary to waterproof the walls. I hope there will be some progress on at least arranging the framing by that time, too.

A week ago today, while we were on our way home from Denver, neighbor John began the excavation for our new house. He texted us a video of a backhoe bucket scraping the rock that underlies the entire cleared area. It was not encouraging. But then he included a picture of the excavation they finally managed. He said we got lucky – no blasting required.

This is what I found Tuesday when I went to look at the site.

That big pile is topsoil and broken-up, sandy rock. Some will be used to fill around the foundation walls. We hope to save all the topsoil for use around the site. I think it will be good planting soil

Later, John and his helper were removing topsoil from the garage area.

This is back of the excavation, where the back of the basement will be with the top at about the level of the main floor.

The dark red is topsoil. Everything else is rock. The topsoil can be removed easily, but the rest is more trouble, especially with the dozer John and his helper are using.

As you can see, the rocks are layered fairly uniformly. It surprised me that they uncovered no large boulders like the ones I found everywhere in the area I had excavated for our current house. Everything at the new lot seems to have broken up into sand and small rocks.

Today the entire basement area is excavated. The garage grading behind the house is mostly done, but there is more rock that has to be broken up before it can be removed. John plans to have a large backhoe brought in on Wednesday to finish that part of the excavation.

Once all grading is done, the next step will be pouring footings and foundation walls. I hope that happens within a couple of weeks, but with construction, it’s hard to know for sure.