It should be noted that if one is building on an "infill" lot, one should account for dirt to be imported and exported. Please read and repeat the previous sentence until it sinks in.
There has been a lot of dirt thrown around between the architect and the builder and the excavator regarding the basement, grade, floor joices, etc (I am going to save that post for after this whole thing is over). The implications this had was vast and varied.

Over the course of the last week, B&D Foundations came in, set up forms, poured concrete, and Basement Formspeeled the forms away. We have one deep basement- all in all it is almost 13' deep. Why so deep? You ask. Well, we can only go so high with the height of the house, as not to encroach on the bulk plane (the imaginary lines that the city requires us to stay within). We also want 9' ceilings on all of our floors. Well, what we discovered was, in order to stay under the bulk plane, the first floor had to be on grade (100'0"). That meant the floor joists were going to have to be below grade. They would have to be set into the basement walls. And if we wanted to have at least 8' ceilings in the basement, we were going to have to dig to the proverbial 'China'.

I have tried to draw this out as well as possible. This is not what you would call and 'architectural detail'. But you may get the gist.

Excavation began on Tuesday. I haven't been out of the house since
Monday- thank you Influenza. Stuart has been sending photos of the progress, but I didn't understand the magnitude until I walked over there today. WOW!

The basement needed to be 10'6", then an additional 11" for the footing. The excavation also needed to be about 5' outside of the actual walls. Add that up and we are digging close to the property lines, hence the Shoring. So I asked,"How many yards of dirt have they taken away?". Care to guess? About 550 yards. If you have ever done any landscaping, one or two yards seems enough soil to make your back ache, but 550. Geese.

There are many advantages to living in the city. Access to good food, diverse communities, recreation, entertainment...I could go on and on.

There are some disadvantages with building in the city. Overly beauracratic systems of attaining permits and the ridiculous amount of over engineered laws.

Because our foundation wall is within 12' of our property line on the North side, we needed to 'shore' up the soil. I can understand this being a concern. We don't want the neigbors fence or porch to slide into our basement. But this is what a few days of shoring looked like.