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It will take several days to complete the stem wall.

4/29 – building the stem wall.

We passed inspection and the footings were poured today.

4/28 – footings poured.

The county will inspect the footings tomorrow. One thing we are sure of is this house will never fall down. All the footings are wider than the requirements for footings in houses back east and the county requires hurricane straps.

4/24 – ready for concrete.

Second day of preparing the footings.

4/24 – digging the footings for the main floor

They completed raising the lot today and will stake the outline of the house tomorrow and perform a compaction test. One good thing about the county requiring us to raise the lot is that we will have a better view of the mountains.

4/21 – lot raised.

The county required the lot height be raised from 1.5 feet in the back to approximately 3 feet in the front to ensure our house does not flood when it rains. Rain in Arizona? Actually, it may not rain often, but when it does, it can rain a lot in a short amount of time and cause rivers of water to pop up. The new lot height, along with rock-lined washes around the house, will help to channel any water that runs off the golf course away from the house and pool.

4/17

As they fill in the soil, they must compact it and test the compaction. The vibratory rammer reduces the air pockets and voids and increases the density and strength of the soil. After the compaction, a nuclear gauge was used to measure the density and moisture content of the compacted soil. They also took a core sample to test it in the lab before they can start building up the height of the lot with more soil.

4/14 – compaction and testing.

4/14 – backfilling the basement.

They completed the framing today and will start to backfill the basement on Monday.

Framed basement

4/11 – screwing down the deck.

4/11 – building the stairway.

They started framing the basement today and were able to get it about 2/3 completed.

4/10

4/10 – starting to frame the basement.

The basement waterproofing and the drain pipe installation was completed this afternoon.

4/9 – basement waterproofing

The framer came this morning to go over the basement walls with our builder. The squiggly lines are all the changes my hubby made on the fly to the entrance to the storage room.

4/9

They delivered the lumber for the basement walls this morning and will start framing on Thursday.

4/9 – lumber for basement walls and ceiling

The power trowel used for the final step in finishing the wet concrete was too heavy to carry up the ladder and over the top, so they used the concrete pumper truck to lift it into the basement.

4/7 – lifting the concrete power trowel

They finished removing the exterior concrete forms today. The plumber will be here later today to rough-in the basement plumbing. Next, the termite pre-treatment will be applied to the soil before the basement floor is poured.

4/2 – all forms removed; waiting on the plumber.

They hefted these large forms up and over the 11ft wall and then carried them across a single beam that spanned the hole.

4/1 – removing large concrete forms from interior.

They insert a metal vibrator, which is on the end of a long hose, into the wet concrete every couple feet to ensure it does not have any air pockets in it. They will begin to remove the forms tomorrow.

3/31 – concrete vibrator.

We passed the basement walls inspection. They will pour the walls on Monday. The house elevation will be about where the support boards on the left side meet the wall forms (not the walkway boards). They will backfill and raise the lot after the basement floor is poured and the basement is framed. We received a new schedule from the builder and the house is slated to be completed Sept 26 – ugh! He said he will probably be able to compress that schedule some.

3/28 Basement wall inspection. County inspector Shelly in white shirt; our builder is to her left.

We passed the basement walls height inspection.

3/27 County surveyor and our builder.

They have completed building the forms to pour the concrete basement walls. Now we must wait for two inspections; the inside of the walls and the height of the basement.

3/26 – basement wall forms completed.

3/25 – building the concrete forms for the basement walls.

Finally, we are back in business!!
We have been fighting with the county permit office for the last few weeks. After reviewing the new footer plans for a couple of weeks, they discovered a page was missing from the plans. The page was not in our set of original stamped plans from the county so the builder had to go back to the original engineer to obtain a copy. Instead of allowing our builder to submit the missing page, they required three new complete sets of plans, at a cost of another $150, and told us we had to start at step one and go through the entire approval process again (zoning, safety, drainage, etc.). After calling the County Supervisor’s office last Thursday, we were finally able to get the permit office to expedite the review. We received approval on Monday, the permit on Tuesday and had the inspection this morning. When the builder called the concrete contractor to set up an appointment to pour the footers tomorrow, he said they were free this afternoon.

3/20 – pouring basement footers.

While we were waiting on the county to review the new footer plans, we had 2 inches of rain on Saturday, March 1. The rain washed the dirt into the one corner of the basement footer forms.

3/2 – 2+ inches of rain – dirt washed into footer forms.