Excavation and compaction.

Excavation started in early June. For the walk-out basement the building site basically just needed a notch cut into the sloping terrain. When staking the site beforehand I was sure to include extra space for the horizontal insulation that surrounds the footing as part of the FPSF design. The horizontal insulation required an extra 4' all the way around and 6' at the corners (minimum). I added an extra 1' to those numbers so I'd have some "wiggle room". I had the machine operator slope the bottom of the excavation slightly downhill as well for better drainage. This proved well for me as it began raining as soon as we finished...

Driveway before and after.

Access to the building site had to be created. The new driveway got fleshed out a bit last year. There wasn't too much that had to be done. Just a bit of tree removal and a little grading with an excavator. The following photos provide a before and after from the same perspective:

June 2010.

Aug 2010.

Bienvenue!

Welcome to my house building blog.

Rewind to the fall of '09. Clearing of the building site was started. Our property was logged about 10 years ago so most of the trees that needed clearing were small enough to be cut with a machete. Good exercise! There were still a few larger red maple and balsam fir that needed cutting and skidding but over-all it wasn't a huge job.

Oct 2009. Skidding trees with Big Red.

Oct 2009. Looking east after bush clearing.

Oct 2009. Looking south after bush clearing.

Oct 2009. Looking west after bush clearing.