The new plan

We recently got a vivid demonstration of the unsoundness of the soil on our property:



The geotech engineer said we had to make a series of changes. Especially disappointing was the loss of a lovely maple that would have stood right next of the house. You can see the change in this side-by-side comparison (the maple is just to the left of the dirt pile:

From Foundation digging

From The Wall

The main changes. though, were that we had to put up a big concrete retaining wall on the uphill sides of the house, and we had to dig out the bad soil, which meant going well below the intended ground level for the house in some places:

From The Wall

This involved major changes to the ground plan for the South side of the house (the left of the above picture). We had been planning a set of rockeries to pull the ground away from the basement on that side, where there will be a door and a rec room window, but that's not going to be possible now. Instead, this may be the view out the rec room window:

From The Wall

ETA: Sorry for the broken links; they've now been fixed.

Underground surprises

We've hit our first real setback (since starting construction): the digging has uncovered a lot more clay in the soil than we expected.

From Foundation digging

It's pretty cool to look at, but from a more practical standpoint it's a problem, because clay expands when wet, and is much softer and less supportive than sand, which is what we thought we had. Compounding the problem, there's a lot of water seeping out of the walls of the dig.

From Foundation digging

Consequently, we couldn't start the foundation this week, and have had to put everything on hold while we try to get a geotechnical engineer out to see if we need to change our plans for the foundation. We have one scheduled to take a look on Monday, so we'll see what he says.

In other news, we've lost two more trees- the hemlock previously referenced, and a large alder. That should be the end of the tree-clearing, unless the maple at the garage corner winds up obstructing the driveway. We'd really like to keep that one, though. Alders are basically weeds, but maples are harder to replace, and this one adds a lot to the forested feel of the front part of the house.

Bug or Feature?

From House footprint

We discovered this at the land earlier this week. This used to be a dead tree trunk leaning against some nearby trees, but the top was chopped off during the clearing (just below the bottom of the frame of this picture), and now it's a perfect log bridge across a 15-foot-deep crevasse maybe 20 feet from the back door of the house. On the one hand, now we have a handy bridge to explore the rest of the property, but on the other hand, we'll have a little kid running loose on this land within a few years, and I can't help thinking of Bridge to Terabithia. We're talking about doing something like run a rope above the log as a handrail, but this could just make it that much more attractive.

In other news, the house footprint has been flagged, and digging has started on the foundation, but it looks like we're losing one more tree (a small Hemlock). There are more pictures at the link above.

First Day

We visited the site again yesterday, after the first day of construction. Already the site is transformed- the driveway has been cleared, and partially filled with rocks (and golf balls), and the footprint of the house has been cleared around the edges, though the trees in the middle aren't down yet. There's a huge pile of debris where our driveway apron will be.

First day

We're told the foundation should be dug out by the end of the week.

"Before" pictures

After a year and a half of planning, we're finally ready to start building the house. We break ground tomorrow, so we decided to get some last pictures of the site in its pre-construction state. We focused on the few trees that we're going to have to cut down.

Before the House