Finished Filling the Moats

We finally finished filling the moats.

Halleluia. Or however that's spelled.

It took about 8 tons of gravel to do the east side and the drainage into the front yard.

Which means it took about 15 tons of gravel to fill things so far. 


We moved it all by hand.  In two days.  Please be impressed.

These are pics of the drainage from the house into the yard.  Luckily there's a good slope down to the road from the house, so the moats got much shallower and faster to fill as we moved forward.    We thank heaven for small favors. 

Foundation Progress

As you know, we're working on our foundation.  Last fall we were here.  Ginormous moats around the house.
















Then we poured the footer.   [That's K2 checking the level.  It looks like she's doubling up in agony, but she's not.] We learned a lot about concrete.

Then we had winter.  The Long Winter in which we got actual snow a lot of times and it like to never got warm again.

And the sides of the moats caved in some on top of the footers.   It was a pain.

But then it got warm and we dug the new collapsed dirt out and put some drainage in next to the new footer.  Because we're responsible home owners and we Never. Want. To do. This. Again. Ever.

Ever.

In this pic you can see the new dirt on the footer in the left of the hole. We lined the rest of the hole [the right side of the hole] next to the footer with geotextile to inhibit root growth around the drainage.

Roots are not your friend.   Unless you're gardening, but this, my friends, is not gardening.




Anyway.  Next we put a layer of gravel in the bottom of the hole and then laid drainage tile on that.

Since there was quite a change in elevation, we stepped the drainage down at the 'steps' with 45 degree joints.  We glued everything.  We checked and double checked the level to make sure everything was headed down toward the road.

Then we wrapped the pipe with more geotextile to keep the damned roots out and covered the whole mess with gravel up to the level of the top of the footer.

Pouring gravel into the space was interesting.  We could have just dumped in on the footer and raked it into the pit, but rakes put holes in the geotextile and we wanted No Holes.

So Eric grabbed a couple of pieces of thin plywood and we put those in the hole and could dump the gravel right in.  Most of the time someone stood behind the boards to steady them.

The boards guided the gravel right into the hole and all we had to do was smooth it out.  Worked brilliantly for both wheel barrow loads and fast shoveling from places we couldn't get the wheel barrow close enough. 

I am thrilled to report that the drainage around the new footer is done.  We've got some finessing around one end where it drains to the road, but we're ready to move on to the next stage in the process.

Next stage:  Building the forms for the actual foundation. 
Following Stage:  Pouring the new foundation.