Since the last post a week and a half ago we have accomplished a tremendous amount. We poured the garage stem wall, re-leveled the top of the house stem wall, damp-proofed the house stem wall with UGL Drylok, and, of course, we back filled the entire lot! Unfortunately, it means that we just buried all of our hard work. Such is life.
Back filling was incredibly hectic and exciting. Thom convinced me that we could do it ourselves by renting a skid steer. Getting the skidsteer into the foundation pit proved to be challenging. With the help of Thom, John D. John S. and Peter M. (a friend of John S’s) We put in three consecutive 12-13 hour days of shoveling, hauling, moving, compacting, spreading compacting, and more shoveling. We ordered 10 loads of sand and two loads of crushed stone from Mackin. We also got a load of wood chips from Blue Sky–a friend of ours who is an arborist. The chips do a great job of keeping the dust down; plus we will need to start building the soil back up. On the morning of the third day of back filling, my friend Marc Kaufmann, who is doing the plumbing for the house, came with his friend Earl (who has done houses on slab before) came to do the rough in plumbing.
In order to decrease our hand labor, we wanted to get the skid steer down into the foundation pit. This was easier said than done since we only had a a ramp that descended 5 feet in about 15 feet of run. The skidsteer did crash into the opposite wall on the first run down, damaging the foam board. The foundation itself was fine.
John and John back filling around one of the porch piers
It was hair raising every time we ran the skid steer down into the pit. Also, I was afraid we would hit the concrete pier that stands in the middle of the pit. The pier will eventually be an interior load point for the house.
Back filling the garage went much more smoothly. There was no need to get the skid steer into the much smaller foundation.
We compacted the sand back fill in lifts of about 7 inches. about 6″ of crushed stone will go on top of the sand, followed by our insulation and vapor barrier.
Originally my plumber told me to use schedule 35 PVC (green) for our sewer connection. However, after we finished he learned that it needed to be done using ABS (black). As you can see here we insulated the sewer line where it was just a couple of feet below the surface. On the right in the foreground you can see a cast iron pipe mortared into the existing town sewer connection.
Our plumber re-working the sewer drain connection. We used a Fernco to connect to the original clay town sewer lines.
The site after back filling, 9-23-2010
