Walls Are Set!

Woo hoo!!!! The Superior Walls crew arrived at 9 a.m. today and by 3 p.m. the walls were in! The guys did a great job, everything is square and level. We've posted over 40 pictures on the web server (dated today, September 30) where you can check out the process. We also have a 40 minute video that shows highpoints of the installation. The video is stored on Yahoo Briefcase. (Will be available in a day or two) Be patient if you have a slow internet connection, the video is almost 30 MB in size. As soon as the crew left, Darko immediately installed filter drain fabric around the perimeter of the walls. If we get any soil erosion, the fabric will provide additional protection to the French drain under the gravel. The plumber should have all of the under gravel plumbing installed and ready for inspection by Sunday night (10/02).

Delays

Last week we had some problems with not having enough clearance between the walls and excavated dirt. That is now fixed and surveyor did his final measuring. We also had some pretty bad rain, and dirt contaminated parts of the gravel floor. All of this is now fixed and walls are coming on this Friday 9,30,2005. Plumber is scheduled to start on Saturday. It should not take more than two days to rough-in under-slab plumbing.

New Pictures Server

I have had to change where we store pictures. Everything is now on yahoo. To see them, go here.

The foundation gravel is in place, I will post some more pictures on Monday. It looks like there might be a problem with some drainage pipe being too close to the foundation wall. We will see on monday when surveyor crew marks all of the outside wall points.

Preparation for Superior Walls

Tomorrow we will first do a final clean up of the whole area, then the number #78 gravel will be delivered for the basement foundation, and this coming monday the surveyor will be returning to mark the exact corners where the walls will be set in. On tuesday we will call for footings inspection (the gravel is considered the footings since we are using "superior walls"). We are very excited to be using superior walls.
Without going into too much depth, you can learn more about this technology at http://www.superiorwalls.com Our goal is to have the walls set in by next friday, September 23rd.

Digging

In the last few days we have measured and started to excavate rough basement corners. Since we've begun, we've been very fortunate where the weather (Hurricanes Katrina & Ophelia!) has been concerned, the ground has been very dry. We've had our first soil test, which measures how many pounds per square foot the soil can support without settling, and we've passed! There is a minimum of 2000 and we've passed with an average of 2700.

Driveway Pipe Inspection

We started working on installing silt fence and "Crush and Run" gravel has been delivered. The pipe that needs to be under the driveway is installed and hopefully tomorrow will be inspected.
There are still some issues on the left side of our driveway entrance regarding visibility of oncoming traffic. I have had no idea how much paperwork and phone calls back and forth is involved to make sure everything is OK. Without the driveway permit nothing can move.
Hopefully this is going to be resolved pretty soon.

We will try to post a lot of pictures as soon as we get them on this address.
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/darko_perkovic/my_photos/