We planned on using some of the dirt from our pool excavation to fill our garden beds. But first, we needed to figure out exactly what we had, and determine what we would have to add to it to make it good growing soil. We learned a net trick from our local botanical gardens. TakingRead more about Soil analysis[…]
Now that we have low and high voltage utilities connected to the power pole, the next step is trenching for water and gas, and to run utilities out to our pool house. For starters, take a look at the point at which the utilities go into our house. Holy cow! There are the four linesRead more about Whole-lotta trenching going on[…]
In the last few weeks we’ve been working on grading the back yard. Here is what it looks like now. Here is a better shot with more contrast. The area around the fireplace is ready for the foundation for the small pool cabana, which will have three open sides. You can see we have aRead more about Back yard grading update[…]
The excavators came last week to start the back yard grading. From the back of our house to the back lot line, we have 2-3 feet of elevation gain that we have to account for. In our case, we plan to break the elevation behind the pool, but in front of our back yard poolRead more about Back yard grading[…]
In December, our beloved designer informed us that she could no longer work on our project for personal reasons. Over the next two months, and interviews with 7 very capable designers, we found someone we felt comfortable with. During that time we also realized that we needed to do major changes to our landscape design. Read more about Design decisions[…]
I just thought this was in interesting before an after shot of the backfill between the basement walls and the surrounding grade.
The excavation contractor worked on a the back fill last week. This is the filling in of the space between the outside of the basement walls and the top grade of the lot. As complete, the waterproofing looks like this. At the bottom is the French drain tube. First they drape a fabric down theRead more about Backfill[…]
I mentioned the large pile of back fill dirt in the discussion about waterproofing. We can’t get rid of that pile until we do the back fill, which is waiting on the waterproofing to finish. But, because of that pile of dirt, we can’t get a crane in place to drop in the structuralRead more about Site limitations[…]
Excavation took about twice as long as expected due to all the rocks we encountered. The amount of rock (beautiful, valuable, Santa Barbara sandstone) was just astounding. We didn’t realize (despite seeing the huge pile grow) how much rock we pulled out until we did a rough estimation of the weight of all the rockRead more about Excavation is complete[…]
I talked about how many rocks we were uncovering during excavation of our basement. In the last few days we’ve watched them tackle the really big ones, that the excavator can’t budge. Now that rock was a monster. When we dug back, it not only exposed 10 feet of depth, but there were two veryRead more about Big big rocks[…]