It's a dirty job!

But somebody’s gotta do it!

My first plan for the dirty job was to dig a pond out in the marshy regions of the back of our property and use our own dirt for the sub-foundation. But, as I knew was the case, the ground is way too soft back there for the dump trucks to get out loaded down with dirt. And what’s more, it’s so overgrown that someone would have to blaze a trail first.  So, my only other option was to bring in dirt now while the home site is hard and not saturated from rain.  It’s been unseasonably dry here, but once it rains good and hard, those heavy dump trucks won’t be able to drive in the yard without sinking.   (I’m not sure what the ground will be like when the concrete trucks come. We might have to rent a pump and hose to move the concrete from the truck onto the home site. We’ll do what we have to when the time comes. )

The new house will be built behind where the current house is. The ground slopes down toward the back of the property and needs to be leveled off. A couple years ago, we had several trees cut down and the stumps ground up, which left a couple small craters to be filled in.

So, bring on the dirt, baby!

Look how wild the back of our property is.  It will be like living in a tree house!   See the man in the above photo?   That’s Rev–the man whose concrete crew saved the day by redoing the concrete slab under Camp Dularge at half the labor cost.

One by one the dump trucks filed into the backyard, dropped their dirt, and

left the same way they came to go get more dirt from the “dirt pit”, which is just crazy. In an area where there isn’t much land to start with, I have to wonder how anyone can spare this much dirt?

Rev’s nephew is in that Bobcat moving all that new dirt around. I was a little doubtful that he could move it much since it was so wet. I was also a little concerned that this dirt had more clay in it than I would like to see. As it dries, Rev assured me it will be just fine. We shall see.

I feel, at this point, that I need to find a witty way to sign off each of these building installments like they do on This Old House., except it’s This New House!  I’ll be working on that, okay?

Until next time,

BW