Living life in Vancity: Digging away my time

This week has been foundation week. After taking the long weekend off, and losing a day because the mini-digger wasn't around on Tuesday, today we started excavations. As noted in the previous entry, we're removing the foundation walls and digging down about 2 feet down to the hard clay layer that sits under our place. The upside is that we'll always have filtered water available on our land...the downside, we have water sitting right below our house (and around our foundations). So, we're still planning on getting the ICFs set to go, but Brett (our project manager) has been pretty busy this week and so I'm not sure we're going to manage Friday for layout (let alone that I'm not sure the digger will be done).

I started the day over at the site at 7:30am and my morning went something like this:
6:45am: Alarm #1 (radio)
6:46: Ignore alarm
6:50am: Alarm #2 (buzzer)
6:50:30am: Try to ignore alarm
6:51am: Get out of bed and turn off alarm
7:00am: Realize that I really do need to get going and get up and grab food
7:24am: Get a call from Tidy-Trailers that the Live-load guy is there on site
7:25am: Arrive on site, and help Tidy-Trailers to load up yet ANOTHER load of garbage (no doubt not the last)
7:45am: Finish opening things up and move metal from where the mini-digger has thrown it (it was all piled neatly the previous night). Wait for metal guy to arrive...
7:50am: James, Brett and Mark all arrive on site to prep for digger (who is supposed to arrive at 8am).
8:30am: Assist in spraying foundation digging areas, moving walls, etc. etc.
9:45am: Mini-digger guy finally arrives (much to Brett's chagrin)
10:20am: Digging underway
10:35am: Rhododendron removed (being given a new home)
11:30am: Depart site having helped get things out of the way of the digger, chatted with the sump/draintile guy, etc. etc.
Metal guy apparently showed up later (though he didn't take one, very heavy, thing?!); and we had James remain on site to make sure that the digger (which costs $125/hr) was busy the whole time.

By the time I returned to the site at 7pm to remove a cedar tree (also being given a new home), the concrete from the front was gone, the rear foundations were largely dug, and the mini-digger had also managed to mange parts of the slab (awesome).

In chatting with the sump/draintile guy I've realized that the City of Vancouver will require me to put in two sumps, but I needed to find out what the depth/elevation of the sewer line was (the so-called "invert elevation"): 102.857 feet. Now to put that into perspective, here's the various heights:

---- 106.5 --- proposed top of new slab
---- 105.17 -- existing slab

---- 103.17 -- clay layer (depth of new footings)

So....we've got about 6" of distance between where our draintile is going and the "invert elevation". The good news is that at least we're not BELOW that line (which would automatically mean we'd need to pump...which then requires a mechanical engineer and a lot of extra $)...but I'm not sure we're completely out of the weeds yet. I'll let you know soon enough however!

In other news, I have set up a meeting with the City of Vancouver (different dept) about running a Vancouver Green Residential Homes Open House tour for next year. This would be modeled upon something that I went to in Washington DC of all places: the not-so-aptly-named http://www.solartour.org/ (which isn't JUST solar homes...but whatever). When I was in DC last year I also went to another related event: http://www.solardecathlon.gov/ which was also pretty awesome. They all reminded me of the Doors Open Toronto event I went to a number of years ago where they featured a bunch of green buildings - both commercial and residential. It was probably the place where much of this insanity began, so in order to pay the pain forward, I thought I'd entrance others! :) No, in all seriousness, I'd like to share the experiences I've had - for better or worse - and help others from going through some of the pain I'm currently experiencing. So, we'll see how it all plays out. I've also chatted with the folks at Greenworks Building Supply (http://www.greenworksbuildingsupply.com/) who are also keen on seeing it happen, so fingers crossed. Not that I need another project....

Aside from some pics, that's all for now.