Moving On

Now that the structure has been verified by the engineer, work continues.  Tom and his guys were in today to fill in all of the channels, footings and other spots in the basement, as well as the large exterior footing in the back yard that will support the cantilevered master suite addition area.

Once Miguel's time frees up from his current project in Oakville, we can start framing and get moving on the real work of getting this project moving forward.

Inspection Day

We met with Mario, the local building inspector, today.  He wanted to review the "preparation work" we had already done, and make sure we're all on the same page (ie HIS page) on work going forward.  It was a good meeting and I already like him so that's good too.

Meanwhile, Rocco was downstairs and working in the back yard, preparing the footings for inspection. 

Block wall madness!

Thom was nice enough to squeeze this foundation work in this week, and he's done an awesome job. In just 4 days, we have excavated, formed, poured and now completed laying over 600 blocks for the foundation.  The foundation items are largely for "Sangria Street" (the patio out front where Karen will purportedly live most of the Spring/Summer/Fall) but also for some structural and steel decorative elements.  Thanks Thom!

Footings formed and poured

Thom's guys finished forming the footings this morning and he was able to schedule the pour for the afternoon.  Our Engineer came to inspect the size, depth and location of the footings, and all is good.  We should be ready to do block work tomorrow.

Drains and footings

When the city came out and ran a dye test yesterday, we confirmed that the clean out just outside the house did run to the front of the road.  However, they didn't run the test from inside the house, and Tony was confused by their result as he'd found a lot of buildup in the sewer pipe.  Well, today we figured out that even though they ran the new line down the side of the house, they never connected it.

That's ok, we did that ourselves, and that's the best way to do things - we'll essentially have brand new drains throughout the house, with plenty of slope to the main drain.  Here you can see where Tony connected the new line to the outside drain:

The backwater valve and cleanout will be just inside Dave's panic room (we'll have to disguise it a bit, in case he tries to escape through the valve!):

Then Tony marked the locations of the remaining new drains and clean outs.  Tom's guys will cut channels, labour will remove the concrete, Tony will run the drains, then we'll fill it all back up and wait for the framers.

We started forming the footings in the late afternoon.

Excavation progress

Tom finished the excavation this aft (and even managed to locate the updated drain service at the side of the house... more on that later) so it was up to the hand held shovels to clean and level the footings in preparation for forming.

Block arrives

Blocks for the foundation walls arrived today...hooray!  This means that we are undergoing some pre-construction activities.  More to come....