drainage and sewer

It's been a month of site work and foundation.  Above shows the footing drain installed.

Once the free draining rock was placed over the footing drain and the filter fabric laid on top, they trenched and ran the pipe for the sewer connection.  You can see the clean-out in the below right corner.

At the same time they also ran the downspout drains.  Our downspouts along the North side (shown below) will pickup the majority of our roof drainage and will dump into a rain garden in our front yard.

Here Neil is measuring for the as-built drawing of our drainage so we know the location when we start landscaping.  Also of note is the retaining wall Neil built along the fence. He made it out of steel I beams and 4x8 pressure treated lumber.  You can see the filter fabric that is over the free draining rock that covers the perforated drain pipe running along the base of it. There was a 4' grade difference diagonally across the site, so we leveled out our side yard and will have a step down towards the front of the property.  

The site is finally starting to look cleaned up and ready for the slab work.  All the bad dirt was removed and structural fill was brought in.

stem walls

Here they are pouring the foundation stem walls.  You can see the arm of the pump truck coming down in the upper right corner.

We will eventually be pouring a concrete slab for the entire first floor.  After having the geotech out to the site as well as our structural engineer, we now need to remove more of the organic material (dirt  with tree roots) from the center and bring in structural fill.

The man in the blue on the left is controlling the pump and the man holding the pump is directing the concrete into the forms. 

Below is a corner of the form with rebar in place.

5/8" diameter anchor bolts are then set into the wet concrete.  You can see them sticking up out of the concrete in the pictures below.  They are typically placed every 48" with a few locations closer together where there is a shear wall.  The anchor bolts will tie the wood framed walls to the foundation.  This enables the house to be more resistant in an earthquake and will keep the framed house from moving off its foundation.

staking, tree removal, excavation & footings

 We have finally started construction.  Above is a photo of Neil and I figuring out what the first floor height would be and staking out the house.  The site is relatively flat, but there is a slight slope across the site that we had to take into account.  2' from front to back and 2' from side to side.  Below was the start of excavation and removal of 3 trees.  2 holly trees and a camellia tree.  We kept an Aralia elata out front which has a beautiful red color in the fall that goes well with the Karina house color.

And this week footings were formed and poured. Stem walls will be formed in a couple days and hopefully poured on Tuesday.  The entire first floor will be slab on grade.  Look for a post soon on the design and floor plans.