Week 5 – So much mud…

We’ve had rain for the past two weekends, and the property is a muddy mess. The site of the house is primarily clay which made walking up the hill to get some pictures a slippery adventure. We had so much mud on the bottom of our shoes that we had to take them off to drive home.

It looks like they finished excavating the dirt up to our property line along the north edge of the property and on the west edge where the garage with roof top deck will eventually go with access to the upper tier of the yard.

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Luckily, the ten day forecast shows no rain and temperatures in the 70’s so hopefully it will dry out the site and allow work to prepare for the foundation pour. Once the concrete is on the ground, rain won’t be as limiting a factor to make progress.

Week 3 – Steel Pile Work Complete

Today’s visit didn’t have a lot of excitement like last week, but it was nice to see all the piles in the ground and cut off at the proper height in preparation for the concrete foundation pour.

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We met our builder there and they stated that most of the piles went down 20 feet 6 inches before hitting limestone with a handful hitting rock at 9 to 12 feet. Next steps will be to move some of the dirt around and prep the site for the concrete foundation pour. Unless we get any major weather, this should hopefully be completed in the next four weeks.

Week 2 – Making friends with the neighbors…

Driving the steel piles have started and boy is it loud. I’m sure our neighbors are really loving us right now. Hopefully this will be the loudest part of the construction process. They have already made a lot of progress although I don’t know how much more they have to go.

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I also grabbed a video of the process and associated noise.

Week 2 – Foundation Work Started

The original house at 3800 Balcones had serious foundation issues as it was literally sliding the hill (albeit very slowly). The original foundation was slab on grade which was not adequate for the soil conditions in this area.

In order to avoid a similar situation, the foundation will be supported by steel piles that are driven deep into the ground. I ran by the site today and was lucky enough to catch the crew setting up the rig to drive the piles in.

I got to watch them connect all the equipment together before lifting it up in the air. I also got a shot of the long steel piles that will keep the house level.

Here’s a short video of them finally getting the rig put together and lifting into the air.

 

Week 1 – Site work started!

After waiting so long to get this process started, it is nice to see some actual progress at the site.

Protecting the Live Oaks.
Fence around the oldest Live Oak
Pile of brush and bamboo
Making cuts in the back of the site for the retaining wall
Temp electrical pole
Cutting and leveling site.
Akash was very happy to see the small excavator.
Looking down from top of site.

Week 0 – Before Pictures

The foundation work is set to start this week so I went out today and took pictures of the site before dirt started getting pushed around.