Digging a hole

We ended up having to put an extra 12 inches of gravel on the driveway. Hopefully not all of the mistakes we make will be that costly. At least it's not all money down the drain since we have a thicker driveway which will hold up better to construction traffic in the wet weather.


The excavators are almost done digging the hole for the house foundation. This is a scary part of the build because you never know how far you will have to dig to find stable ground. Luckily we did not have to dig very deep, which means we don't need a lot of high foundation walls.

We decided to keep the majority of the crawlspace at the same grade as the basement. This will give us an 8 ft tall crawlspace we can walk into from the basement and use for storage, or even future living space expansion. I was shocked when I saw the hole for the first time as it is a lot bigger than I imagined it would be.

The foundation hole for our detached workshop is also done. There were some deep pits of unstable soil which we will have to replace with some better soil.


I don't think we will have a problem trying to find the extra soil. We have some huge piles of sandy soil as a result of all that digging. We have some even bigger piles of dark topsoil which will be saved to spread out over our yard at the end of construction.

I also spent quite a bit of time at the local hardware store yesterday trying to figure out all the plumbing pieces I need to hook up the required double check valve assembly on the water line which will feed our fire sprinkler system. This check valve prevents stagnant and possibly contaminated sprinkler water from back flowing into the drinking water supply. Here is what I came up with. Hopefully it works and passes inspection.