Excavation Complete

Basement portion of excavation, back right corner (southwest)

Part of raised garage portion of excavation

Boys on top of a "mountain" of dirt

Trench from house to property line (front right--northwest)

The excavating is done! There are some big piles of dirt--which the boys have climbed on!!! The trench for the water and electricity has also been dug. The boys enjoyed running around in the big hole. It certainly is exciting now that we are making some progress. We have a few quotes coming in for plumbing, electrical, forced air heating, etc.
We met our neighbour to the west of us, and he is putting in geothermal heating in his place, so we passed along a set of blueprints to get a quote as well. It will definately cost a little more than forced air heating would, but it is paid off within 8-10 years. It allows you to have A/C in the summer as well, along with in floor heating. We wouldn't end up putting in a gas line at all. It is also much better for the environment. To learn more about geothermal heating, you can check out these sites--http://www.groundsourceenergy.com/ or http://www.nextenergysolutions.com

Our floor system is set to be delivered on Oct 30, so Dad L. is going to be coming down on the 29th, and get prepped to start putting things together!!! The rest of the framing package is still set for delivery on Nov 2, and then Dad will have more work to do!!!
Hopefully there will be some progress on the basement this upcoming week. Leo (from CLC Construction) is set to come up Sunday, and will maybe start to get the footings ready.

More on the Excavation

Some good news!! It seems that the product in the borrow site is all topsoil. We were thinking we would need to bring some topsoil in at the end of the project, but now it looks like we will have plenty!! Leo, our foundation contractor, met us out at the lot this afternoon. Leo works out of Lethbridge. His company is CLC Construction. For those of you who know Andy, who works with Todd at Alliance, this is his father-in-law. Leo wanted to make sure the excavator knew to dig holes for pilings, and extra footings for our decks. Leo is also getting us a quote for a plumber and drywall. It sounds like Leo might be up Sunday to pour the footings and review the project. He estimates that the basement/garage should be completely done in 3 to 4 weeks time--including the floors.
Well, it is all very exciting. We'll try to post update every few days, or if something is happening any given day, check back often as we will post things as we hear them.

Excavation!!!

This is the pile of fill that had to be moved before the excavator could start "digging". It use to be several small piles (you can probably see them in the pics of the lot pre-build) but now is one big "mountain" (as the boys call it!!).

Just taking off the top layer!!!

Boys in front of digger

Boys in spare digger bucket

Excavation has started--a day ahead of schedule!!! The boys and I had a rushed morning as we needed to rush plans out to the excavator this morning before Jacob started school. Todd got a call at 7:30 this morning saying that the digger was on its way out to start digging the hole. The boys and I went back around noon to check out the progess, but the digger was at lunch!!! We are going back out this afternoon at 3:00, as we are meeting Leo, our foundation contractor, there as well. (Good thing the lot is only about 15 minutes south of us!!!) It ends up that we will have to excavate a little deeper than planned. We had planned to only dig 4' 3" into the ground, but our lot has a "borrow pit" on it. There was a gravel pit on this development some years earlier, and it ends up that material was borrowed from our house site, and then replaced. The foundation has to be placed on "native" land, so we will have to go about 4' 9" into the ground. We may have to have small window wells now, but maybe not, depending on how we are able to slope the ground from the house, keeping in mind drainage!!!

Excavating Starts Tomorrow

Jacob and Josh are very excited about seeing a digger and other machinery out at "the land" tomorrow. I have to meet Del from Del's Excavating tomorrow morning to review the plans and then the digging will start. I have to admit, Jackie and I are pretty excited about the digging too but more because it will mean we're making some progress. We'll be sure to take some pictures and post them here tomorrow.

In other areas, we're having a challenge finding a plumber(s) who can give us a quote so if you know of any, please let us know. The other trade we're a little worried about finding is a drywaller, however we did make some progress yesterday. We posted our drywall project on www.contractors.com mentioning the details and that we'd like to get a quote. However, rather than post the project to contractors in Calgary who are all too busy, we posted it in Chicago. The best part is we already got a call back that they are interested and they are looking for work.

The housing market in the U.S. has slowed considerably so we thought there might be some trades that are looking for some work. We figured that we have some Aeroplan points so we could fly two drywallers here and even after paying them their rate plus a daily allowance for food and hotel, we'll still be ahead by quite a bit. We'll post more on this as we get more details.