It has been two years in the making and it has finally begun. This morning the shovels are out and the earth is moving for a foundation. This is to our dream home and it is off to a great start a whole month ahead of schedule given the incredible start to spring. The frost is out of the ground and construction season has officially begun.
The excitement of starting this project waned somewhat with a phone call asking us to come to the site as soon as possible as there was a small problem developing. Large boulders found at the back side of the foundation dig resulting in more earth being required to be removed to find undisturbed ground. Things like this do happen when building.
Laughter was not the expected response to the pending additional costs, but to us, the funny thing was, we had been intending to have a walk-out basement to gain access to the back yard which would require the foundation being dig four feet deeper than the current plan. Under careful consideration and guidance, we abandoned this plan due to costs and uncertainty of what would be found underground. Well we now that an additional four feet would have been no problem but we now have to backfill a trench about five feet deep in order to secure the ground before the back wall footing can be made.
So at the end of the day, with no further surprises, we now have large piles of soil around a giant whole in the ground where the foundation is to be and an engineer’s report saying that we need to fill the hole compact the fill before we can move further.
Day one, a hole in both the ground and our house building fund.
The next day brought the solution to the previous day’s issues. Stone and more stone to fill the hole thus allowing the forming of the footing of the foundation to proceed. An inspector and engineer passed their eyes on the work and approved the work to continue. The final placement or pinning of the corners of the house’s footprint were then established by the surveyor and the foundation crew proceeded to place the footing forms in their respective locations.
With the forms in place, levelled, supported and inspected it’s time to pour the concrete on day three of this build. The problem remains, the weight of the concrete required to fill the forms is beyond the half-load restrictions thus some slick negotiations with the municipality was required to arrange for the delivery of two cement trucks with their loads along with a pumper truck needed to distribute the cement to the footing was granted for our building site. However the same story was not true for a second home being built by the same crew just across the way on the next street over, no concrete for them for this time. We will take the wins where we get them so the project moves forward but have sympathy for the owner of the other home.
With such an early spring things like construction can get a jump on the season, however the municipality is understandably reluctant to remove half-loads off roadways due to potential frost damage. For now, we have an exemption to move the concrete required for the footings and a possible second exemption required for the pouring of the foundation walls next week.
The weather is changing over the next few days from warm with plenty of sunshine to white stuff floating in the air and at town hall so is the thinking about half loads, so time will tell.