The excavating contractors started by stripping the top soil off the lot on Wednesday. Thankfully this step could be done while we waited for the engineer to come out and figure out what to do about the current elevation plan. No delays!
Once the engineer came out it was decided that we could dig the house down another 1.1m and this would solve the issue with the SW corner's footings. Not only were the footings going to be out of the ground before, but the house would have been sitting up so high! It would have looked ridiculous and completely defeated the purpose of a bungalow. I don't even want to know how many steps it would have needed just to get in!
The engineer had planned the house this way originally because of the walk-out basement and we also wanted a gravity-fed septic system. Something had to go, so we opted for an additional pump to pump the waste out of the house.
Once that issue was resolved they could start digging out the basement and septic bed area. The septic bed area ended up being A LOT bigger than we had anticipated... 32 meters wide!
This meant we lost about 7 or 8 8-10 year old trees. We were a little bit disappointed, but what could we do? We offered them to our neighbours, and they now have 7 or 8 beautiful new trees in their yard! I'm happy that they didn't go to waste, and I'm hoping it's a good start to great neighbours!
Here are R and T checking out where their rooms will be! They didn't want to sleep in them just yet.
*UPDATE: We were able to sink the septic bed another 90cm so now this means we're back to a gravity-fed septic system! Yay! $2500 back into the budget!
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