Plumbing (last week), footings for the garage, and blocks for the wall

Last week (I somehow missed posting this one) they did the initial rough-in for plumbing.  Some of it they were unable to finish like the master bathroom (they needed the tub to get the rough-in exact) and the kitchen because we were still waiting on the kitchen design to be finished.

Plumbing rough-in in the basement bathrrom

Another view of the basement plumbing rough-in.  the shower is at the far end, controls are on the knee-wall and shower head is on the left.  Toilet right in front of the knee wall and then the vanity in front of that.

This has been a pretty slow week at the site awaiting the well-driller but today we started digging footings for the deck on the West end of the house. That deck is crucial to get the final gable end wall and roofing on.  We also dug footings for the garage today and had a load of crush and run delivered for the garage.  We have scheduled the footing inspection on Monday and the concrete folks will come next week to pour the footings.

One thing I have to mention - it's great to have a neighbor like ours.  He's got stuff that most guys would drool over like a Kubota backhoe, a hand tamper, water barrels, construction calculators and a cement mixer.  We were initially planning to hand-dig the footings but Jack was available and made short work of carving out 5 footing holes for the deck and about 100' of trench for the garage footings.  He also used the loader to add more dirt to the backfill areas that had settled and he pushed the crush and run around to make our work today easier.  I think we'd probably still be digging the footings if we'd done this one by hand.  Thanks Jack!

Ok, I just had to add another shot of the beams down the hallway, and you can see the skylight well adding the glow to the center of the house.

Here's the plumbing for the Master bathroom as viewed from below

Here's Jack working on the footings for the deck - nice toy!

And here's the beginnings of our garage - footings will be installed next week then we'll build a CMU (concrete block)foundation wall and a stick-framed wall on top of that.

More of the deck footings - once we get these in and the deck framing up, we can finish this end of the house

All I can say is THANKS JACK! 

And here's the site at the end of the day after Jack made easy work of the digging - you can see the roof isn't complete to the West (right side of this picture)

 A partial shipment of the retaining wall block was delivered late today - we have 19 pallets coming and only 6 1/2 were delivered today - that's 160 of the colored blocks and 113 of the gray (footings) block.  Tomorrow the rest of the block should be delivered and we'll get the washed rock and gravel delivered to make up the 12" of backfill which goes between the wall and the compacted earth.  There's a roll of geogrid which will go at 2' intervals up the wall and runds between 5 1/2 and 6 feet back into the ground behind the wall.  There were also several cases of the break-off pins that complete the system.  Tomorrow's delivery will include top caps that we'll use to finish the wall.

This is the "Canyon" color - it' matches the soil colors pretty darned well!  Each of the blocks weighs about  87 pounds so after lifting 700 plus of them, we should be in pretty good shape!  no need to go to the gym other than to sit in the hot tub on days we work on that wall!

This is the first 6 1/2 pallets of block.  40 blocks per pallet.  Gray is for the buried footing, the "Canyon" is the rest of the wall.  The black roll on top is the geotextile fabric.

The first 6 1/2 pallets viewed from the top of the 'wall' that will be retained.

This is the geotectile - 150' long by 6' wide.  It will be used to tie the wall into the soil and gravel backfill which in turn supports the load on the wall.  We also have to put drainage ports every 25' of wall.

Stickered Wood, Gravel for the footings, and Loan Approval

The last week has been a busy one - we've now got 21" of gravel on the floor of the excavated site, there's a wastewater pump for the basement bathroom, and we stickered (stacked) the wood for air drying.  We have 19 rows of 4 boards at 17' each with 18 of those being hickory and 1 row being red maple.  We still have to get the tin to cover the stack and protect it from the weather but the hard work is mostly done.  There's still some wood that needs stickering but it isn't in board form (edges are not squared off) and there's a whole pile of slabwood that we'll cut up for smoker use later.

 Yesterday was a very good day - we got word that the loan has been approved and we picked up a dog grooming tub off CraigsList at a much reduced price ( http://content.foreverstainlesssteel.com/) We got the Large Dog Tub.

  The windows and doors (all but the fire door) are ordered, we have a meeting later this week to discuss shop drawings for the walls.  We expect the walls to be manufactured next week and set the following week.  Power from the transformer to the house site is in the works as is the well - our next concern is how deep we have to go and how much water we'll get.  Neighbors have anywhere from 3 gpm to about 25 gpm so if we get something in the 6 to 9 gpm range we'll be very satisfied.

Later this week we'll go to closing on the loan - now to get plumbing fixtures ordered.  Pretty soon we'll need that storage unit for all the goods we're starting to collect.

The Hickory - some really nice character in this wood!

A close up of the Hickory

The finished (minus tin roof) stickered wood pile

21" of gravel footing - the "hole" in the middle is for concrete footings for load bearing walls

The sub-floor wastewater pump in the mechanical room of the basement