Foundation options

We got the steel quote back for the reinforcing portions of the bball court wall. The steel alone was going to be $8,000-$11,000. As a result, we've decided to go with the poured wall option. J&L will be handling pouring the 20' tall wall on the eastern edge of the house.

The engineer had given us three options for how to handle that wall. The diagrams are listed below:

Excavation Day 2

Major progress made on the excavation today. The hole is the correct depth across one entire side. The boys pulled a lot of material out and things are proceeding well. The stone turned out to be a non issue - once they got it broken up, the excavator could pull it right out.

We're stopping work for the Christmas holidays and will be back at it on the 26th.

Excavation Day 1

The equipment was delivered and the boys (Kenley, Kody, Kory and Darren) started work. The stone wasn't the problem we thought it was going to be - the hammer broke it into pieces quickly and the excavator took it from there. We'll be working more on it tomorrow - probably can't finish on Saturday, so we'll pick things back up next week.

Temporary Drive Installed

J&L Poured Walls installed the temporary drive today. It looks pretty good. We'll have to put in some additional rock as what's in place gets driven into the ground. They had to work around a cable utility box out near the entrance, but I don't mind the curved look at the edge - we might just leave it that way.

Hopefully we can start excavating by the 20th.

Permits (Finally!)

Well, it only took about 4.5 months, but we finally have permits for zoning and construction. We're hoping to get started in the next couple days by installing the temporary drive.