Sills and a dug well

I drove up to the building site this past weekend to install the sill plates. My excavator was working back filling the foundation. He needed extra soil to build up the ground around the foundation, so he moved dirt from the gently sloping hillside behind the house. This gives me a relatively flat backyard and will improve water runoff in the spring.

This is a view behind the foundation, looking southeast. My garden will be close to the house, where it will get the most sunlight.

While my excavator was there, I asked if he could dig a couple of test holes to look for water. The first 2 holes hit ledge about 2 feet down. The third hole, he was able to get about 10 feet down. The ground was moist and water was slowly seeping out of the ledge.

My excavator put a bed of gravel in the hole, followed by a well tile and then surrounded it with gravel. 16 hours later there was 6 inches of water in the well tile. We will have to see how this turns out, but I was happy to get some water. There is a lot of runoff here in the spring, so I will have plenty of water then. I planned to put in a 300 gallon water storage tank all along, so finding water is just an extra blessing.

I finished up the sills on Saturday afternoon.

As an experiment, I built some Jefferson alternating tread stairs. I lowered them into the foundation and tried them out. They work fine. I just have to remember I am on stairs and not a ladder.

I hope to get back in a couple of weeks to frame the floor.

We have a foundation !

The weather was good this week so my foundation contractor was able to get the foundation poured. The bump out on the right is for the bulkhead and stairs down into the cellar.

I went up on Friday to tar the foundation. First I had to remove the metal tabs left over from the forms.



I decided to prime the spots where the metal tabs had been, with tar.



The next day I rolled waterproofing over the foundation.




Here is the view inside the foundation.

I'll head back up in 2 weeks to start the sills and floor joists.
It is exciting to see what was once a drawing on a piece of paper become a reality.

Foundation hole

My excavator dug the foundation hole yesterday. He ran into some ledge in the first corner, about 3 feet down. We moved over a few feet and were able to dig another 2 feet lower. There is plenty of fill on the lot, so we can build up the finish grade around the foundation.

The ledge we found at the bottom right.

Down in the hole.

The plan is to get the foundation in this week.