Footings - and our first overnight guest!

Today we had the county inspection for the garage and deck post footings which went well. The concrete pour was a "will-call" scheduled for 12:00 and it showed up as scheduled so we poured and finished those footings.

The footings for the garage - pre install of the rebar

The footing on the West side of the garage

This is what happens when you place footings in the overdig area - we had to go down about 5' to get to virgin soil and actually decided to move the garage 1' further from the house to avoid having to dig down another 5' or more (the bottom of this photo is the house end of the footer on the East side of the garage)

After the pour - footings were set to level using a transit and "pinning" a leveling mark on the sides of the footer.  

These are the footings for the deck - the closest and furthest will support the posts that will bear the load of the roof (carried on LVLs that run from the sill of the wall to the beam).

A different view of the garage footing - looking from the West.  

After that we had our neighbor once again help with digging - this time it was for the footings for the retaining wall.  He made quick work of digging even though the placement of the pallets with the block were making the job a bit more difficult.  At the end of the day we had a good pad for the gravel and first course of the retaining wall so tomorrow will entail moving lots of gravel, leveling it and then setting the base course as well as the drainage tile that runs through the drainage aggregate (which makes up the 12" immediately behind the blocks.  We're still waiting for the engineer to provide cut-sections of the wall and to ensure that the drawings we have will suffice for county approval.

The electricians also showed up today to start rough-in and got the majority of the basement finished but pulled off at the end of the day due to the house not being quite ready for the complete wiring. We're hoping that the schedule of events will include finishing the deck and West end gable wall this week. That hinges on the NC State approval of the geothermal well and water well locations so we can get those wells drilled.

Cans for lights installed in the basement hallway ceiling - 4 of them.

The utility room - breaker panel will go against far wall - just to the right of the box.  Two florescent fixtures will light this room.

The closet in the office

Desk nook in the office with one can over it - switched separately from the rest of the room

Two cans light the main portion of the office

The space bedroom - 4 can lights here.

Workout room - wall outlet for TV.  Lighting will be 3 cable lights on the ceiling.

  Our surprise for the day was an overnight visitor who stayed through lunch.  Late last week we found telltale signs that a raccoon had been wandering about on the property and had left his pawprints on the griddle the framing crew uses for their lunch.  Well, after lunch today one of the framing crew discovered that a juvenile raccoon had decided that the nice cool basement was perfect for a nap.  Laughingly he used a piece of the I-Joist as his bed which is a technique our framing crew uses to catch a few winks at the end of their lunch (the flex helps soften the "bed").

Our baby raccoon - at this point we thought he was sick since he wasn't moving much and didn't  seem bothered by all the humans gathering around him.

Shortly after this picture he decided to move to the other side of the room and then he departed the basement (with a little encouragement).

Once we finished the retaining wall footings, we recalled Jack so we could dig a trench to stub out the septic line under the deck.  Tomorrow the plumbers will finish that drainage line and then we'll start on the deck and gable end wall in a day or two.  Also scheduled for tomorrow is the rough-in for the HVAC (geothermal units) throughout the house.