False Start

Another day. Another pile of dirt in front of the house. This time its coming from digging the trench for the new water service from the street to the house. Essentially they have to have all of the ground open and ready to roll when the city shows up to tap the main and approve the exterior underground plumbing.


The trench in all its glory. The city requires that the water service go into the building within 5 ft of the original location of the water service. In this case, that means we have to go the east side of the foundation to not have the water moving into the middle of the basement wall.


This is the view of the hole that actually goes under the foundation. The plumbers will run a copper pipe up under the foundation and into the floor of the basement just inside the foundation wall / footing. This is also the reason the cement floor wasnt poured today. Because the city has to see the entire supply line from the tap to the house, we cannot pour the cement until they have seen it all and know its correct.


Here is a shot of one of the gambles I am taking on the property. The architect and I (mostly the architect) are currently working with the city in earnest to get the design of the 1.5 story garage approved so we can have "attic" storage over the garage. If we are able to accomplish this, then we are going to put radiant heat in the garage floor. Since there was a chance we might do that, I decided to have a separate loop of exterior radiant tubing - notice the white color differs from the black used in the interior - in the event that we could run it out to the garage and have the sidewalk / stairs warmed. So, because they have to run in a closed loop system we were really having a hard time coming up with a way to run the tubing without it destroyed through the rest o the construction process. In the end I came up with the idea of running enough tubing to get to the garage so it could be a closed loop and leaving it under the deck that will be built next week until we know whats going on with the garage. Would be pretty awesome to not have any shoveling to do on the walkway out back. One can dream.

We shall see how it goes with the city tomorrow. If all goes well we can pour the floor on Friday and let it cure over the weekend that will leave us with a bonanza of mechanical work next week.