A bigger hole in the ground

The dig is done! These two pics show the bare ground on which the footings will be poured. We were lucky in two ways, clean fill and no explosives. As I mentioned in the very first post, a house had burned on the site. The lot had a suspicious mound in the center of it and we all feared that we'd find rubble and debris from the destroyed home. The soil morphologist I engaged for septic purposes also found plasticized clay, which would have required us to dig a couple of feet deeper and fill with rock, increasing our costs as well as our chances of have to blast bedrock. Nope. Almost all of the dirt cut from the hillside can be reused as fill and everyone is happy with the virgin soil exposed. The plasticized clay was just a vein that was about 3 feet thick and stopped four feet above the grade. We did not hit bedrock until we were right at grade on the high side of the hill. It could not have worked out better for us. At any point, the house will either stand on bedrock or 6-12" above it. I don't expect a lot of trouble from settling.

Here the builder is asking my advice on a highly technical aspect of home construction. Yeeaah, right. Actually, he was explaining some next steps. I decided to keep my hands in my pockets. The other option was to place one on each side of my head to keep it from exploding.

Here I am with our builder, Jim Ince, and the best builder's helper one could find, my niece, Lena. What she may lack in experience and skill, she makes up with enthusiasm!