Out with the old, in with the new!

Today our builder outlined where the men have to dig for the new foundation. Of course, this encompasses the exisiting foundation hole. The workers will dig two feet beyond where the new foundation will be in order for the new basement walls to be installed.  They have to still excavate the old floor and fill below that floor as we are digging deeper in order to have a 9' ceiling in the basement.

 Clay got a chance to actually move the backhoe's shovel - Oscar, the owner of the backhoe, showed Clay what to do.  Clay was having a good time, and I shot some video on my little camera.  It's not every little boy who gets to run a real backhoe!

The basement will be made of a precast wall system from Superior Walls. The walls will not only be concrete on the outside, but they will come insulated and studded so that we could finish off the basement if we wanted. The basement walls will be installed in one day - pretty darned quick! Right now we plan on having the computer servers and utilities in the front right side of the house (facing the front of the house), and the playroom will be the left front. In the back left will be the workout room for David to ride his trainer in the winter, and Clay to practice his karate. That leaves the right rear - I need a room, don't I?

The workers are having a problem digging through that hard, red clay dirt that we have, so it's taking longer than they thought it would. Anyway, the foundation looks huge relative to the old one, so it should be interesting to see what it all looks like in a few days!