Saturday, February 2, 2008

Ready for backfill

I was hoping to have the majority of the backfill completed this week, but we had to delay the waterproofing due to the weather. We tried drying off the foundation with large torches, but every time the waterproofers showed up it would start raining or snowing which prevented them from applying the material. We finally were able to get the waterproofing applied on Friday which means we can start backfill on Monday.

The waterproofing itself is a thick rubber membrane which is sprayed on the foundation walls and the top of the footers. We covered the walls surrounding the basement and crawlspace with this to keep the water from seeping in.


On the tall foundation walls we also used a special drain mat which gives water a path to travel down the wall to the footing drains. This will keep most of the water away from the concrete. The footing drains will be installed on Monday before backfill.
While we were waiting for an opportunity to apply the waterproofing, we were able to backfill the inside of the garage. We will finish this off by placing a layer of pea gravel to pour the concrete slab over.
Besides the uncooperative weather, a couple other crappy things happened this week.

1) The power company's contractor who is responsible for installing our transformer stood us up for a second time. Our power conduit runs underneath our driveway because we did not have room to install it along side of it. Before they can provide power, they need to inspect to see that the conduit was installed deep enough. This means we need to dig holes in our driveway every 75 feet for them to verify the depth. Of course this interrupts work since trucks cannot drive down the driveway with the holes dug up. The first time I was given a 2 day window of when he would be out to inspect the conduit. We had the holes open for 3 days and he did not show up. This time he gave me a 3 hour window of when he would be out to inspect. He didn't show up, so we had to fill in the holes so the waterproofers could get in to do work. An hour later he showed up with similar excuses he had the first time. Our next appointment is Wednesday at 10am. As you might imagine, this is really ticking me off. I'm not sure what I will do if he's a no-show again. The excavators are going to be wrapping up this week, so it's my last opportunity to do this.

2) Somebody ripped off my chipper/shredder. While it sucks to have this stolen, it really sucks knowing that the jerk could come back and try to steal other things we might have around during construction. We will have to be more careful about locking things up.

6 comments:

Wendy Castleman said...

Sorry about the chipper theft. What a pain. Are you reporting it to the sheriff's dept in case they by chance find a big stash of stolen equipment?

Hope the inspector guy shows up this time!! Thanks for going solo Saturday night so we could have heather for the evening! Let me know when you two are ready for a date night so I can Jonah-sit!
:) Wendy

Mike said...

Yep, we are planning on reporting it. Apparently the sheriff's dept checks their list of stolen items against all of the local pawn shops each night.

No problem at all! Heather said it was the easiest sitting job ever :)

brady said...

As long as they don't steal your Greywall you'll be fine. Greywall Rocks!!

Soon you'll have a projector set up watching that Sideways movie you have.

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