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

I Love You Wall-E!

Today was a good day. The forms came off, and I was able to see my very first wall-e, the huge driveway retaining wall. When we stucco the basement walls, we'll stucco this side of the retaining wall as well, and eventually we also have to put a guardrail on top.
 

This photo shows where the front door will be (to the left of the retaining wall, above the vertical rebar in the foreground). Once we build the front-facing foundation wall, we will backfill almost to the top of the retaining wall.

In the picture below you can see how the house is really starting to take shape, and for that I am both thrilled and grateful.

Next up is the return of Ken the Excavator on Monday, and he'll be moving dirt around, backfilling against the foundation walls, and compacting the dirt. Once that's done we'll start working on the basement slab. Am I excited? What do you think?