Shoring

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.

Monday:
Rick and team is setup on site with drill rig and rebar. We are set to dig 18, 24'x10" holes, 3 feet apart. The soils report indicated that the water table was around 19'- this gives us some pause, but it's been really dry this season, so we are crossing our fingers. The drill rig is set and starts to dig the first hole. Around 16', the soil starts to slough- not good. Meaning that the soil at the bottom of the hole is basically caving in. They move to the other end and dig another hole to see how deep we can get. At about 19' it starts to slough again. At this point, we call out the structural engineer to inspect and advise. Instead of 19' being a sufficient depth-mind you this is 6' below the basement depth- the engineer insists that we go to 24' with casements. Ugh.

This means ($$). ($$) that will never be used for the house. It is necessary, but I'm still not happy about it. It means that the bottom of the holes will need to be encased with pipe, then immediately pumped with concrete and rebar. This would not be a huge expense if we didn't need a concrete pump in addition to the drill rig and concrete truck. The pump drops a tube to the bottom of the hole and pumps concrete down, as to displace any water at the bottom of the hole.

Rick and team leave for the day, set to return on Wednesday.

Wednesday:
At 8a.m., Rick's team and the drill rig were back on site, along with the cement pump truck. Instead of buying pipe for each hole, Stuart located a pipe we could drop in, fill and pull back out. They seemed to get in somewhat of a rhythm. The structural engineer came out to check hole depths and process- signed off and left [I think he was laughing a bit]. They did find water, it displaced in the form of a geyser. There were pools of cement soup everywhere. And the bottoms of the holes began to blow into one another, so they stair stepped every 6' and then came back down the line. It was messy. It was costly. But by 10am the next day, all 18 holes were full of cement. And given the fact that we went through a lot of cement, our entire lot probably has a decent layer of the stuff 24' down. Consider it bedrock we didn't have before.

Next Phase: Survey Stakes and Excavating basement