Digging Day!

Our neighbour D. with his mini-backhoe is here digging up the basement walkout foundation at this very moment!

Photos will be posted later. If I take many. I don’t want to disturb him with my camera.

We can’t get this basement walkout fixed soon enough. We went to Halifax the other day and while we were gone there was a torrential downpour. The water came into the basement walkout so fast, it overwhelmed the drain and was high enough to flow over the door sill into the basement. Looks like a tidal wave went through the basement to the basement drain.  Nothing damaged – it’s happened before ! Most of the water was already gone when we got home.

Photo time!

Here is Jeff’s prep work.

Dig here!

Deck layout. X’s mark the spots for the sono tubes – which I found out yesterday are actually called sona tubes. Who knew?!?

Dig here!

This is the basement walk out we want to fix up. First by fixing the drainage and repairing the crack in that wall (that looks green in this photo).  Eventually we’ll have to replace the door sill because the bottom rotted out from being in water all the time. The grade outside this door unfortunately slopes towards the door.

Sorry hostas. You’ve been sacrificed.

Our very skilled help made quick work of Jeff’s jobs today.  In 4.5 hours he was done!

That’s a lot of dirt in Monty’s back yard!

Here is what it looks like this evening:

Unfortunately the ground keeps caving into the hole. Making it very dangerous for Jeff to do anything down there. And they weren’t able to find the weeping tile that goes around the base of the house yet that we hoped to tie into. It doesn’t look that deep in this photo but it must be over 6 feet deep.

D. is going to come back on Sunday and has a backup plan that we can also put a drain in at the back door and tie it into the nearby ditch to get the water away. He will come back and dig the trench for us and we’ll bury weeping tile that way too.

The driveway was the next project.

While D. was digging, Jeff hurried to put the PVC in the ground.  His electrician friend has some special way to get the wire quickly installed inside the PVC, so we could get the machinery to backfill the hole while he was here.

After the PVC piping was buried, D. backfilled a foot or so on top of the pipe so we could put down a ‘buried cable’ plastic ribbon to warn anyone who might be digging on the driveway in the future.

Hmm, I flex my toes weird when I am bending forward taking photos down deep dark holes.

Our deck plan changed. Dana works with all sorts of contractors and handymen and he told us about a thick ‘L’ bracket that can attach to the house into the foundation and hold the double-wide joist.  That means we wouldn’t need to fiddle with the siding and put up a wall mounted board, and we don’t need to mess with an extra row of sona tubes against the house foundation.  D. had the brackets so Jeff picked them up and thinks they will work well.

At least there are a few pretty things growing in my weedy flower gardens.

Look how happy Jeff is with today’s progress!