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In spite of the rain and fog, the crew from Johnson Construction finished the excavation yesterday. Now we have nice flat pads ready for the crushed stone base and the Superior Walls. Here's the team using the hammer to cut through the rock for the septic line. 
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Excavation was going pretty smooth until we hit bedrock toward the east side. It's just too solid for the excavator to break through. 
It looked like we might have to call Mr Dynamite to blast through the rock but that would set our schedule back at least two weeks. Brian, our excavator, suggested that he could bring up a trackhoe with a hammer to try breaking up the rock. The trackhoe is sitting on top of the rock shelf. We will have to cut down 3-4 feet in the far corner (behind the machine). 
So far, it's going pretty well. With any luck they'll be able to turn that rock shelf into a pile of little rocks by the end of today. 
 The Porta-Jon arrived today. All the comforts of home!
 Yesterday, the crew finished clearing trees for the house and the new driveway. The driveway will be to the northeast of the house and will loop around this group of large oaks. It took longer than expected, but they did a nice job routing the driveway around the larger trees and did their best to avoid damaging the roots. We are planning to start digging the foundation today. We really hated to take down this huge oak tree.... 
...but it was hollow inside and probably wouldn't have survived much longer. 
We were held up by rain for a couple of days but things are really starting to move quickly now. To help catch-up on the schedule we brought in an extra crew to cut and stack wood as the excavator removes the trees and rocks.  We sited the house to save as many trees as possible, but a few have to be removed. Wow! Look at the fall colors. Last week, when we were digging the septic, the leaves were still green.  We used Garcia's Tree Service last year to take down the dead trees and leaners. We brought them back yesterday to cut the trees as the excavator takes them down.  Lots of big rocks to move! We will be using these to make natural retaining walls Next week will be very busy. We plan to finish excavation by Tuesday when the President of Superior Walls is coming up to scope out the site for access and positioning the crane. We will have Garcia's on hand to remove any branches that might interfere with the crane's operation.
Then we install the stone base for the walls and the surveyors come back mid-week to precisely stake all the corners Superior will be fabricating the foundation walls next week at their plant in Charlotte. After more than 18 months of design and planning construction has started!! The excavator installed the septic system on Friday. We will start excavating for the foundation next week.  |
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