Foundation Issue Resolution

Fri, Dec 14, 2018

My brother is not interested in canceling the project. I’ve talked a lot about my dream for this place, and how its more about the build than the cabin. For him, it’s more about the cabin than the build. Given all the issues we’re facing with this foundation, I’ve been worried that he would want to cut losses and go find a place that was already built.

Fortunately, he really likes the lot. And he really likes the floor plan we’ve designed, so he said absolutely not, we cannot cancel the project. This was a big relief.

I’ve been thinking. If we move the house, we will have to dig a new daylight basement anyway. Being on a hill, a daylight basement is just a natural feature of any home. So we’d be digging down about 10’ anyway to carve this out. Why not scrape 10’ back off our existing pad? So we wouldn’t dig a trench, but rather remove all the dirt going 10’ down. By removing all the dirt, there wouldn’t be a safety issue.

Pete, our excavator, moves fast. How long would it really take him to remove all that material? We’re estimating just a couple of days. If that’s true, this isn’t too bad of a setback. We’re going to spend a few thousand more on the excavation, plus the cost of the concrete to pour these deepened footings. We’re going to be set back a month maybe in all. Not ideal, but not something we should cancel the project over.

I called our structural engineer with our decision: we will move forward with the deepened footings.

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