120 Yards

One hundred twenty cubic yards.  That's a lot of dirt.  Think swimming pools full of dirt.  And multiply it.  Twelve dump trucks full to be exact. 

That quantity of dirt is result of the excavation for the foundation.  The building site slopes considerably and obviously the house has to be level,  so that means digging.  And digging.  And digging.  With a big machine.  Using the smaller excavator that we have been renting for our drainage work it would have taken days and many many trips to dump the dirt with our trailer.  

Before excavation

After we got fern gully on it

Some jobs, I came to see, are worth paying other people to do.  Shold excavating, a local company here in Port Hadlock, did the digging and trucking in one day.  I'm not normally one given to envy, but man, their excavator is cool.  The bucket, as you can see, is fairly enormous.  At least 50 puppies could fit in there. 

 

The excavating exposed some wet seeps in the soil.  Which means muddy mucky stuff.  Frustrating.  We were running on the assumption that the numerous underground drainages, which we've been working on for weeks, would have caught that water and taken it directly to the bay.  But alas, it's a wet place.  The water keeps coming.  There will be drains around the foundation footings to hopefully take away any remaining water. (A footing is a concrete base that supports the foundation walls.  The footings in this case run the perimeter of the house and measure 18 inches deep by 2 feet wide.  We're looking to pour the footings next week.)  But since the soil is mostly clay - which turns to slop when saturated - it's pretty important to make sure there's not a ton of water under the foundation.