Filling in the Foundation

The foundation forms were removed on Monday and Tuesday the Structural FX crew brought in a Bobcat and a mini-excavator to move the dirt around in front. Right on schedule, they filled in the foundation in back, first adding in drains along the bottom over crushed stone, and wrapping the concrete exterior with a plastic membrane.

The demolition folks fom Peninsula Demolition came back Wednesday and removed the remaining debris in back that they could not get when the huge CAT was here a few weeks ago. Brian said this was the first project ever that they were short on dirt. We're going to need more clean fill here as soon as the front foundation is done, hopefully I can locate a bunch for free on Craigslist. I missed one fellow a couple of weeks ago in Walnut Creek who had like 50 dump trucks for free. Surely there will be more like that one.

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Pouring the Concrete

The last of the house is now gone and it is one big dirt patch in our back yard. There will be a smaller excavator coming back mid next week to take some last things out of the very back of the yard. The last of the foundation was ripped out and hauled away with 5 trucks working in sequence most of the day Wednesday. There was a lot of contrete to move out of there.

The very next day after the demolition was completed, our contractor Brian and the Structural FX crew did the first concrete pour into the back section. I was really impressed with the crew when our engineer from ASI came and decided a change would be necessary to the back foundation to make the wall deeper. That change was needed to make sure the wall would be solid enough to handle all the weight of the house and unfortunately came after the foundation had been all ready to go.

So the crew on Tuesday, while the demolition was going on and the temperature reach 100 degrees, ripped the back foundation forms off, rented tools to dig out the trench deeper by hand, and rebuilt the back forms, all in an amazing 1 day. I was blown away at how fast they were able to react to what could have been a significant delay.

They poured the entire back section all of Thursday afternoon, 6 cement trucks in all! The cement truck could not back in so they had to pump it in and Brian and a fellow from the cement company handled the 400 lb hose all day. When I caught up with Brian at the end of the day, he was completely wiped out and covered head to toe in cement muck. He said he had not done something like that in 10 years! Reminded me of the work I did a few weekends back ripping out the overgrown shrubbery above the creek. John and Barney of the crew also looked like they had also had a really long day but they were still cheerful despite it all. I can only imagine that this is probably some of the toughest work to do on a house and the 100 degree weather did not help.

Monday they will be tearing down the foundation forms and bringing in a Bobcat to start leveling the dirt all around and preparing for building the front forms. Wednesday the demolition crew will be back for one final haul in back of branches and remaining old sidewalks.

10 Minutes Flat - Part 2

After a grueling and agonizing process with the City, we've finally got the complete set of approvals of our building plans and the necessary permits. I'm really not impressed with how the City seems to have no regard for who is paying the bills for all these delays. The person who was supposed to sign off on the plans went on vacation without telling us or leaving someone else to push the paper. We had to resort to chasing it through the system.

Anyhow, here we are at last ready to put the pedal to the metal. A day after our permits were granted, here is the arrival of the Beast Part 2 ripping down the last of the house. It was so fast that my contractor barely had time to call me and let me know it was happening. All told, 10 minutes and the whole thing was knocked down and being ground up by the giant metal treads of the CAT.

What was frustrating again was that the inspector had to show up before the demolition could proceed and he gave a window of 9-noon. Of course, the demolition folks showed up at 8:30am ready to go, but had to sit around until noon when the inspector finally showed up. He gave his blessings and they went at it with a vengeance.

In the mean time, the back foundation has been finalized and will be poured on Thursday. The work on the front foundation will start next week.

We also placed our order for our solar system. They filed our R1 permit for the CA rebate and our panels are on order to lock in pricing. We wanted to get the R1 in asap as we heard rumours that CA was going to reduce the rebate rates. We were never able to get any concrete information on this, despite a lot of e-mails and calls to the rebate center which were never returned.

There is also a little flux right now on re-upping the ceiling cap on the number of households PG&E is required to buy back power from on the net metering basis. They will be hitting that ceiling soon this year after which they have no obligation to buy back any more power from new applicants, but there is legislation working its way through CA government to extend the ceiling. It would be darn silly to cap this and thereby ruin the payback economics on a solar investment.

Foundation Work

It's been a little slower to watch the progress the past couple of weeks. The team at Structural FX are working on the foundation in the back of the house which involves a lot of calculations, careful wood construction and rebar work. They are expecting to pour cement next week.

In the mean time, Brian has been chasing the City getting the last of the building plans through the various departments and making slight modifications to meet their requirements. The final approval for the building plans should be granted next Friday at which time the main house is scheduled to be demolished and the last of the debris in the front of the house cleared.

I've taken the opportunity to further advance our kitchen cabinet and other cabinet designs with the Home Depot kitchen designer who has been great. We're almost done with this now. One more iteration of minor changes and it will be final.

We received our hardwood floor very quickly. It is already taking up a lot of space in the garage but that was expected. It turns out that the same company that quoted me at $10+ sq/ft was the one that delivered it for the company on the Internet that I bought it at $6.50 sq ft. Go figure how that works!!

I also ordered our fireplace. We chose a wood burning fireplace model made by Napoleon, the NZ26. It's the same one my father has and I've seen it in action, it performs superbly. No smoke when you open the door. Totally sealed door. The wood burns with flames rolling all over the top, it looks really neat when a log burns in one of these. It has an automatic thermostat that turns a blower on when it reaches a certain temperature. And best of all, there is no leakage of your warm air from the house outside after the fire burns out. We bought it from fireplacewarehouse.biz in Colorado. It will take a week to get here.