Construction Begins...

Dig Day At Last...
Our surveyor got our lot staked out as required, and our new Field Manager Steve showed up at the lot along with our former Field Manager Jeff to mark the site. Wayne Homes was doing some realigning of territory and workload, which necessitated the change. I appreciated that they both showed up to ensure a smooth handoff of duties. The excavation site was spray painted to mark how many "courses" deep the excavator had to dig for the house, garage and porch areas. I also had the chance to finalize the plan for locating the drainage pipe away from the house, the sewage leech area and the line for cable service.

At long last our eagerly awaited Dig Date arrived! We got up early and headed over to our building lot so as not to miss the first breaking of ground. The excavator finally showed up, and we snapped a few pics to commemorate the moment...




The weather cooperated for half of the day before things got wet. The excavation was completed on the 2nd day. The excavator was one of Wayne Homes' choosing; the homeowner doesn't get a say. The thinking is that an outside excavator may not be familiar with the way Wayne Homes does things and cause complications.

The Drain Line
At the end of the 2nd day Steve, the Field Manager called to check on the status of our wishes for installing the drain line from the foundation. This is used to funnel any water away from the house and uses gravity to accomplish this. Somehow this part had escaped me - not exactly hard to do concerning matters of construction. Steve said that due to the lay of our lot the length of the line required to reach daylight was longer than what Wayne Homes included as a built in cost. (At this point I could envision a dollar bill sprouting wings and flying away...) He added that the excavator who did the lot could do it the next day - for the extra fee, of course. This made sense to me because he was already onsite with his equipment, even though I preferred my own guy for it. We had the choice of paying this out of pocket or subtracting it from our PPI (Purchaser Paid Items - our pool of money for infrastructure built into our financing). We elected to go the PPI route since our costs for electricity service installation were substantially below the estimate built into the PPI. Because of this we should have some extra "wiggle room" for just such an unanticipated cost such as this.

Our First Snag
While out for a walk the next day we wandered by the site and watched the excavator working on the trench and futilely scraping away at a big mass of rock he had encountered. He later informed me that he couldn't break through the rock with his bucket to get to the depth required to let gravity move water away from the house. He said that I would hear from Steve the next day on what my options were, but basically they would be a sump pump in the basement or additional cost to break through the uncooperative rock (like jackhammering). Again I saw additional airborne dollar bills winging their way away from me. He said he had a sump pump at his house and regretted the decision. Here is the patch of rock at the end of the trench...


A Possible Solution
I talked with the Field Manager today and he suggested that we proceed with the extra cost to finish the drain and coordinate with my excavator in using the same trench for the septic system line. This made sense to me since I didn't like the idea of a sump pump and was willing to take a hit on the extra costs to get things done correctly, not cheaply. I then provided my excavator's info to Steve to do the coordinating.

I'd also already talked with Tom, my excavator about coming over to have a look at things on the weekend anyway. I have a huge amount of dirt from the excavation that needs to be moved away from the construction site and wanted him to take care of it. I was told that after construction they would need about half of what was there for grading the lot.

Thinking Ahead
As an aside, Sharon pointed out some nicely colored large pieces of rock (shale / slate?) dug up in the excavation which might be good for landscaping a path later. I went over and grabbed two cartloads of them for potential use later; I'll probably get more as well.

Footer
While I was over getting the rock, much to my surprise a crew had been in and installed the forms for the footer. Pleasant surprises are always welcome.


OK - that's all for now. Until next time......