Dig a Hole in the Ground and Rain will Come

Ever since the electrician left his beautiful work behind, we've been trying to get the footings dug for the new additions on the house. And of course, as soon as you start seriously discussing plans to dig great big holes in the ground, Mother Nature hears you and turns what has been a very dry season into an instant monsoon. I've had a weather station at my house for over a year now that records weather data to the PC, and it has already told me that January 2013 is a record month since it has been in operation. Awesome. And don't anyone tell me we "need the rain" in January. For what!? Everything's dormant. There. Oh and here comes the arctic cold. Ok, ok, back to the house.


After reading that, you'd think that nothing's happened. Well, the footings are complete! Fooled you. But the weather is no lie. After the 5+ inches of rain the week before, we had a couple of days of sun and warmer weather to dry things out. Our excavator found a window to fit us in and delivered all of the equipment a couple of days in advance: A very large excavator, a smaller excavator and a Bobcat. The plan was for him to arrive Monday, Martin Luther King Day and do all of the excavating and stump removal. On Tuesday the building inspector would arrive and check off the permit followed by the concrete truck a few hours later.

Well it turns out that extreme cold temperatures for this area were inbound on Monday night into Tuesday. Our excavator talked to the building inspector and got an advance "OK" to go ahead and pour the concrete in the footings in the same day due to the weather that night. They both thought it too risky to pour on Tuesday in below-freezing temperatures when on Monday it was 45F.

It all happened very quickly. They crew showed up at 7:30am and got to work tearing out the old porch foundation using the smaller excavator. It took quite a bit of pounding, scrapping and prying to begin to break it apart. Eventually it came out and was loaded into a dump truck and hauled away.

Then attention turned to using the large excavator to dig out a large 38" diameter stump that just barely in the way of the new addition. This tulip poplar tree stood near the house and was struck by lightning back in 2009. In 2011 we had it cut down as a large piece of the canopy hanging over the house had died. Standing over 135ft. it was a beautiful tree. And now there is nothing but dirt where it used to be.

Back to the smaller excavator and the footings. He used an auto-leveling rotary laser level (remember this) to level out the area of the new addition crawl space. Then laid out the measurements I had given him for the addition dimensions. After checking for square, he dug them out. It looks like I'll need to lay 6 courses of block work to meet up with the existing foundation subfloor.

Before digging the footings for the porch addition out front, we had to find where the oil line passed through between the house and the buried oil tank. I had been in the crawl space a few weeks before and found and marked where the pair of oil lines dove into the dirt and heading outside the wall. One guy in the crew had the job of hand digging to find and trace this oil line. Whoever dug this trench 45+ years ago must have been drinking. Sure enough, while the path wandered back and forth toward the tank, it ended up crossing exactly in the path of one of the foundation holes for a porch post. Not a big deal, at least now he knew where it was and not to hit it. After laying out the dimensions for the porch, he dug four very square 2'x2' holes for the porch columns. I was impressed with how square a hole he dug with a bucket on an excavator.

There was now only about an hour before the concrete truck was to arrive. They set pins in the trench to the height of the footing, and laid two lines of rebar down in the trench the entire length, side by side. One guy took off to get some bales of straw and some plastic. The idea here was to cover up the concrete in the footings with plastic and then fill the trench with straw. This would help keep it insulated against the cold weather showing up that night.

The concrete truck arrived and put nice big ruts in the yard. Because the new (temporary) electric lines hung so low, the truck couldn't get close enough to the trench to use the chute directly. Here I was thinking he'd be cussing me out under his breath pushes wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of heavy concrete mix back and forth. No big deal he said, and proceeded to use the bucket on the big excavator to fill and transport the concrete. Pretty slick. And that bucket can hold a lot of concrete. In no time the concrete truck had cleaned up and left.


And that was that. We now have a trench full of straw. The kids think the square porch foundation holes make excellent trap doors. Tomorrow they'll be back early to dig out three other stumps elsewhere on the property (all due to past hurricanes and tropical storms, Ernesto and Irene).

This brings an end to hired help. Now that this is done, we're on our own. Next job: Concrete block foundation. Time to take the "DIY" and kick it into high gear.

I Said it was Only Temporary, But...

Now that the porch was gone, the next thing in line was to get our existing overhead electric service moved out of the way. It comes to the house on the same side where the addition is going to go. There are three insulated individual solid copper lines coming from the nearest utility pole up to the peak of the house. 

A very old and rough looking service entrance cable then goes down the peak, disappears under the eave and runs to the front of the house, right next to the entrance on this side of the house. Not a very nice place to have a meter. 

So, we hired an electrician to temporarily move the service out of the way. He in turn coordinated with the local utility power company to do their part. Within a couple of hours, the service was moved. Not exactly how I pictured, but the job was done. I assumed they'd put up a utility pole right next to the front of the house and run the line to there and down. What the electrician ended up doing was place a couple of ordinary 12' 4x4's into the ground about two feet and stringing it up from there. Well, I guess it is just temporary...


The utility company ended up replacing the wiring coming from the transformer all the way to the house. This was old pure bare copper coming from the transformer to the next pole. 


From there it turned into the insulated wire I that goes to the house. All of this was changed to the modern and standard triplex wire, all wrapped into one insulated bundle. They left this cable extra-long so that it can be moved to it's final location once the new addition is complete. 

The plan is to eventually move the service to that same end of the house, the exterior wall of the addition. At that time the electric meter will also be moved to that side of the house, out of view. The service entrance cable will quickly disappear under the crawl space and run to to a brand new main panel to be installed in place of the old Wadsworth panel we have now. It's old and we're just about out of space in there now. 



It may not look pretty but we have power to the house. We just have to keep reminding ourselves that it's all just temporary. 










Now that everything is out of the way, ground breaking is next!