Gold Dirt, Compacted

Compacting the gold dirt for the basement slab

This week saw the long-awaited return of Ken the Excavator, who began the task of moving away the brown dirt, moving in the gold dirt, and compacting everything so that we can prepare to pour the basement slab next week. As you can see, the dirt is hosed down, so that it can be compacted.

Yesterday Hector did the compacting with a small hand compactor, which looked like a noisy, slow, tiring and quite unpleasant task, but then we ordered a much bigger and very cool remote controlled compactor (see the movie above), which sped things up no end.

Next up will be the base rock, due to be delivered in the morning. Over that will go plastic weatherproofing, followed by a layer of sand. The basement will also get a layer of polystyrene insulation, to prevent the radiant heating system from wasting energy by heating the ground. Then rebar will be criss-crossed over the entire area. Next Tuesday the radiant heating guy will lay pex tubing above the rebar on the basement side only, and then on Wednesday we'll bring back the concrete trucks and pour the basement slab.

The garage, in all its compacted glory