Always Something

Well, what would a construction project be without its fair share of problems and hiccups along the way. The second week in we have had two. Both out our control....really mother nature - thanks!

Rocks and rain - lovely huh! As the excavation of the footings for the containers finished, which will sit on a crawl space so got dug out lower than the rest of the house, it exposed some serious rock formation that wouldn't budge with the excavator. 

We went back and forth with the concrete guys (Tim & Jim of Precision Concrete), our engineers (Jim and Mark of D&Z Engineering) and our Geologist (Kelly Thomas of Foothills Geotech) on how to handle it. The concrete guys wanted to pin the rock and then form over the pinning. The engineers wanted to drill holes into it and use Dexpan to break up the rock and the geologist wanted to KEEP DIGGING!

The geologist won in the end, mostly because it was the cheapest option and didn't require him and the engineers coming back out and submitting more paperwork to the county. So enter my favorite toy - 

Of course Kyle was at the helm and it took all day to get rid of the majority of the rock as I filled buckets with the debri and hauled it up out of the foundation. 

It turned into a long night with us staying out there till 9pm and by 4pm it had started raining - of course it did.

So with the rain we also had to dig some trenches so the foundation would drain. It was a long, wet, cold night but we got it done and the trenches didn't flood. And what a storm it turned out to be.

The storm was so bad that the next night I was up all night as the camper rocked and rolled from the wind and rain. I hope there aren't too many of those before we finish the house, that wasn't fun.

So the rain has passed and we are back to sunny days. The mud is drying up and hopefully we will be pouring the concrete next Thursday after the 236 people (slight exaggeration) that have to inspect it first have done.....the red tape is ridiculous and I know our county isn't even the toughest.