Excavation - Day 8

The excavation of the basement is complete and the digging equipment has left the building. Here I am enjoying the new basement with a coworker.

I'm meeting with the engineer from Southwest Gas tomorrow at noon, so hopefully we'll get the gas line re-routed quickly and it won't slow up the overall schedule by much.

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Day 7 continued...

Here is our sad tree, which is now about a foot away from a giant hole in the ground. It probably had enough of it's main roots cut to guarantee it's demise, but so far it seems to still be surviving.

Day 7 continued...

Here's the back corner of the basement with the bump out for the window well/emergency exit. You can also see a cross-section of the original footing for the back of the garage.

And just in case anyone is wondering, the reason the exterior garage wall frame is still there is because we have to leave it standing in order to maintain the setback from the original house. Current code requires a minimum 10 foot setback from the property line. When our house was built the setback was only 6.5'. If we tear down the wall, we have to rebuild it 3.5' further in, which would make parking a car in the garage difficult unless you drive a Honda Z600.

Excavation - Day 7

More digging. Most of the back two-thirds of the basement is done now. The hole is about 11.5' deep, but it seems deeper than that in person (except to the professionals). Here are a couple pictures.

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The basement is now about halfway dug. This picture doesn't show depth very well, but the dirt wall there is about 10 feet deep.

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Excavation - Day 6

The foundation was saw cut and removed today and the excavation of the basement started...

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Day 5 continued...

I hope I remembered to lock the front door...