Foundation Walls and Back-Filling

January has seen some nice movement on our home construction.

Forms were put up and then Girardo and his crew filled them in.

Once the walls were put up, we both had to take our over-sized rollers and roll tar onto the outside portions of the walls to waterproof them from moisture. Laura's dad, Lee, was a huge help by knocking off 'tabs' that were left over from the concrete forms and by painting tar into the crevice between the walls and the footer. All the waterproofing had to be completed for our next approval by the county before we could move on.

Lee knocking tabs off the walls

A view of the start of waterproofing

As you can see, snow has been piling up on the property.

The unusual amount of snows so far this year has caused progress to slow a bit. As if that was possible.

The 10' walls with the waterproofing on them. In the foreground are giant

French drains to help channel water around the foundation.

The giant mounds of dirt that have been snoozing since last spring finally came down. With approval by the county, our excavator, Preston, was finally able to back-fill dirt around the exterior of the walls and do some pretty creative landscaping.

Preston moving one of the 2 ton+ boulders

One of the most important aspects of the back-fill was to make sure we had plenty of space in front of our house for turning around and for visitor parking. As we watched Preston distributing dirt around the foundation, we were relieved to see lots of space around the front of our house.

Next is to start filling rock in the inside of the basement along with concrete for structural walls and the beginnings of plumbing. Can't wait for the framing to start going up, too.