baby steps

What a beautiful day!  The sun was shining, the sky was blue, the humidity level was near perfect, the mud was drying and the surveyor showed up!

This is the surveyor

Yep, he and his partner were here bright and early.  We were their first stop for the day.

The surveyor’s partner, I think he is the one actually in charge.

His partner’s job was staking out the corners of all the foundation walls.  That guy behind surveyor’s transit was recording distances and elevations.  All this work so we can find out if our Village will approve our porgress thus far and give us the green light to continue building.

And thats a wrap!

The surveyors couldn’t promise when we would get our signed and sealed plat of survey, so necessary for us to be able to proceed. 

They shrugged, “Friday? Maybe next week?”  And then they left.

There is the three-day Labor Day holiday this weekend that could possibly slow our already snails’ pace progress we are making.

I suppose we will just have to go back to being content watching the mud dry!

 

 

Like watching paint dry

The excavator left with his dinosaur, leaving room for the Bildor Concrete crew to move in with their big red & white concrete mixer.  This is a great moment for the renovation… we are no longer deconstructing, but we are actually building the addition.  (there will be more demolition later, but I will not dwell on that, yet)

Day 1 , the guys jumped into the big hole, set up the machine that made sure everything they built was level, dragged in all their concrete forms and got busy building the formwork for the footings.  We are in a climate zone that requires the bottom of the footings to be 42″ below the finished grade.  This assures that they will not be subject to frost, heaving the foundation.  At this stage of our progress, the exisiting landscape and driveway have not yet been excavated to their new level, so these footings are very deep!

By mid-morning the forms are all in place and ready for inspection.  Of course, the inspector was not on-site hanging around waiting for the forms to be finished, however he showed up and approved the location of the forms giving the concrete mixer enough time to pour the footings by the end of the day!

pouring the footings

Day 2, the Bildor Concrete crew returns early to strip the forms off the new footings.  They are beautiful!  The rest of the day is spent forming the new foundation walls for the addition.

Did I mention how happy I am with Bill, the owner of  Bildor Concrete?  This gentleman has a great wealth of knowledge, he treats his crew with respect and the crew respects him, he is a perfectionist and his crew is amazingly hard-working.  And as much as possible, his crew cleans up at the end of each day.  He makes sure mud is not tracked onto our village streets!  Overall, the whole crew is very pleasant.  This sub contractor is one of the reasons I chose my General contractor.  Steve seems to only use subs that are not only great at what they do, but they are nice to have around.  Even at 7 a.m.!  Consider carefully who you choose to construct your project.  There will be alot of people in your space over the duration of  a project!

Building the foundation walls, making sure they are level.

Forming the foundation walls

the new concrete walls are tied into the existing foundation. The rebar is drilled into the old foundation about 12″

End of Day 2, all the forms are in place.

Day 3, the crew unloads what seems to be miles of reinforcing bar (re-bar) and jumps back into the hole to install it.

rebar in place

I have to admit, I am a nerd.  I was facinated by this whole process.  I can’t believe I spent hours watching the concrete being poured and the rebar being installed.  I have spent many years on job sites, and I have also drawn more than my share of foundation details.  But I have never gotten to watch the process step-by-step and so up-close and personal.  I had no idea how the rebar actually landed where I detailed in my drawing.  There are crossbars spanning the width of the form that are secured on the exterior of the form.  The rebar running paralled to the form is bent to follow the shape of the form, and then it is tied with wire (like grocery bag  twisty ties)  to the crossbars everywhere they intersect each other.  We never learned this in my senior Concrete Design class.

By mid day, Bill was waiting for the inspector to approve the installation of the rebar.  By the end of  Day 3, we had concrete in our foundation wall forms.

Day 4, Bill was back with his boys to strip the forms off our new foundation walls.

What a beautiful work of art!

so many details to take care of…the sleeve allows a drain line from the new addition to tie into the existing drain line.

Our village Building Officer sent this email at the end of the 4th day:  “Please be reminded that an updated plat of survey prepared by an Illinois licensed land surveyor shall be submitted to the Village for our review and record upon completion of the new concrete foundation and prior to continuance of any building construction activities beyond the foundation stage.  The spot survey shall demonstrate that the new foundation construction and TF elevation is consistent with the approved plans.  Please submit a signed and sealed hard-copy of the updated plat of survey to my attention at the Village Hall.”

And this is how it has looked for the past 5 days.  We have had torrential rain for the past 5 days.  There is now a moat around the new foundation wall.  Due to the rain, our surveyor has not been able to send a crew to fulfill our obligation to the village.  Due to the rain, we are not able to move forward.  Due to the rain, the excavator cannot begin backfilling the foundation wall until the mud has dried.

It truly is like watching paint dry.

 

 

A rain delay

Look what we found parked in our driveway!

The excavator reminds me of a dinosaur.  We came home from our trip to find it sleeping in our driveway.  While were gone it took out the stump that was left in the ground after the oak tree was taken down.  Along with the stump, it took a great bite out of the lower edge of the driveway.  You can just see the edge of the small crater behind the left wheel of the Prius.

The excavator was also busy last Friday removing the concrete slab where we used to park when we had a garage.

The garage used to be here

The contractor took care of the gas meter as well.

new temporary location of the gas meter

Encouraged by the long stretch of beautiful dry weather we have been experiencing in Chicago, the crew planned to return Monday morning to continue digging the new garage floor and foundation.  The big machine was left to rest on our driveway over the weekend and dump trucks were ordered for first thing Monday morning.

The spell of perfect weather had left our lawns and flower beds a bit dry, thirsty, and wilting.  I ran the hose around my most precious plants over the weekend, but left the rest to fend for themselves.  Normally I would have welcomed a good long soaking rain, but not this weekend.  The excavator left a good foot of dirt on the top third of our driveway in its efforts to fill dump trucks on Friday afternoon.

By Sunday evening our storm forecast was bleak;  100% chance of strong thunderstorms overnight. My garden was so excited.  The weather man was spot on in his report and it started pouring about 8:00 on Sunday night with lots of thunder and lighting that lasted into the wee hours of the morning.  The report Monday morning told us we had at least 1″ of rain overnight.

About 7 a.m. my contractor, clad in his big yellow rubber boots, along with the concrete & excavating contractors, tromped up the driveway, through the mud to assess their options.  We were stuck on the front porch unable to navigate through the muddy sea to greet them on the driveway.  Conclusion, the soil was too wet to be dug up that day.  If  Monday stayed dry, then excavation could resume on Tuesday.  Monday’s rain added to the soggy mess so excavation was postponed until Wednesday.

Steve did make a valiant effort to clear a path for us so we could get out to the street.

the mud free path down the driveway

We just wore our mud shoes and carried clean shoes with us to our cars parked down at the end of the street.

Delays in construction schedules are inevitable and usually unavoidable.  Our friends and neighbors have asked “how long do you think this will take?”  I don’t know.  Six months?  Nine months?  I am not sure.  It has been almost six weeks since we started and there have been days when there has been no progress at all because one project can’t start until another project finishes.

How the HGTV Property Brothers  can promise they will have a major remodel complete in 5 weeks is beyond me!!  It typically takes 10 business days between the time the granite fabricator templates for a new countertop and when the finished slab is installed.  I assume when they cut the camera on the three people working in the house, there are 80 more in the wings that spring to action.  The building inspector probably always shows up on time rather than sometime during  a 4 hour window like the cable company.

I have been involved in residential construction for almost thirty years, I know, hard to believe I am that old!  There will come a point (or many points) in a homeowner’s project when he or she just can’t take it anymore.  Nothing ever looks quite finished. We are still in deconstruction on the garage.   Life is in disarray. We have odd things from the garage stored in our house rather haphazardly, and our driveway is a mess.  Even the construction fence has taken a beating giving our house the appearance that it needs to be condemned.   And people you don’t know keep showing up at your house.

I am enjoying the process, but there is a bit of dysfunction affecting my household.  I must remember that nobody made me do this!  I chose this and I so grateful that I get to improve my house.

So today was a great workday.  The sun was shining, the mud was drying and the dinosaur filled about a dozen dump trucks. Our dirt was taken to another site nearby that needed it to build berms.

excavator busy at work removing the dirt below our old garage

All in a days’ work!

The excavation is complete.  We have a rough grade for the floor of the new garage and large trenches 42″ below grade for the footings and foundation walls.

And the gas line is reconnected.

We take fast early showers in the morning before the gas gets disconnected.  The flexible line gets pushed out of the way until the end of work day to protect it from getting crushed.

Tomorrow the concrete contractor will arrive to build the forms for the footings, fill them with concrete and wait for the inspector to arrive to approve the construction.  Of course, we are assuming no unforeseen circumstances will delay the new schedule!

Progress while we were away!

The construction schedule stars all aligned perfectly the first week of August.  While we were away on vacation, the trenching company that was to install our new septic system was miraculously free that week to create a great mess in our front yard so we could have a state of the art septic system!!  Hooray!

Backup 2 years ago when we first set pen to paper to create our dream renovation.  We have a 75 foot driveway, with a 7 foot rise from street to garage.  During our Chicago winters, there have been times we counted our blessings when were just able to get our car to pull off the road onto the end of the driveway out of the path of oncoming snowplows.   Even more miraculous, was to get a car all the way up the icy slope into the garage.

Once in the garage, we faced another hurdle getting into the house on foot:  negotiating five steep steps down into our mudroom on the lower level of the house.  This was made more arduous if we had to take groceries to the kitchen across the lower level and up 6 more steps to drop our bags.  Who thought this was a good design?  Yet, this house model is popular all over 1960s suburbs.

Over the past 14 years we have created quite a wish list of features  and flaws we wanted to change or improve for this house that called out to us to rescue it.  The driveway and garage level have always been a hot topic, “wouldn’t it be great if we could lower the garage floor to the same level as our family room while decreasing the slope of the driveway?”  As we debated the merits of this idea,  our old driveway slowly disintegrated.  Sink holes appeared, railroad tie retaining walls rotted into dust, and with every winter, the snowplow took away more & more asphalt at the end of the driveway.  We were faced with an expensive repair, including a new paver base, new retaining wall and asphalt.  Hard to spend that much money on something we were not happy with even in good condition.

We finally made the decision to plunge into planning our dream renovation that would tackle most of the items on our wish list, including a new driveway with a more gentle rise into the garage.  What could be more fun than that?

Then we met Natalie, our village Health Officer.  She is an engineer for Land Technology who advises our Environmental & Health Commission regarding septic variance requests. And I really like her!  Most of the homes in our village have wells and septic systems.   Requesting this variance was never on our wish list, however, we were advised by the village that we needed to have her review our preliminary plans.  Although the system was old, there had been some upgrades to the field in the 1980s and she felt that if construction did not impact the field (which takes up most of our front yard) it could stay the way it was.  If only our plans were that easy!

Lowering the driveway 3-1/2 feet would require a retaining wall on the west edge of our driveway (on the right as you face the house).  The existing edge of the field (a series of buried drain lines across the lawn) lined up with the west edge of the driveway.  ” No problem”, said Natalie, “as long as the retaining wall is located 10 feet from the edge of the field, you can leave the system alone.”  We could see her point, we wouldn’t want septic water leaching onto our new driveway.   However, if we moved the edge of the driveway 10 feet to the east, we would only be able to drive one car into a two-car garage on a very narrow driveway.  Her recommendation was to explore resizing the field.

This lead us to hiring Alan Cruzan, a very nice civil engineer whose firm, AMC Septic Design & Land Engineers helped us design a new septic system.  The final outcome not only got the approval of both our county health department and Natalie, our health officer, but also a septic field with a smaller foot print that ended 10 feet from the edge of the driveway.  Because we have only one acceptable spot for our field (the front yard) there were concerns about the future health of our septic system. The new design addressed this by giving us a state of the art aerobic, muli-tank septic system that has much less of an impact on our environment than our old 1000 gallon gravity fed system.

And while were away, the new system was installed!

The new, improved waste line replaces the old slowly disintegrating cast iron drain

The first chamber

Waste water enters on the far right. Air is blown into the baffled  chamber which causes bacteria to speed up its digestion of waste, so water pumped into the next chamber is relatively free of waste.

dropping in the second chamber

Water then flows into the next chamber, and is pumped via a lift station into the last 1000 gallon holding tank where it leaves and enters the septic field.  Wasted water is further purified as it travels through layers of soil into the aquifer far below the surface of the lawn.

House drain to the system

The system in place

I am told that I can landscape around these pieces.  I sure hope so.  If anybody has any suggestions, please send them on to me.  The orange fence is where the edge of the front side walk will be!

The tank needs to be accessible for servicing (the first green cap in the foreground), the air intake needs to be above ground to take in air (the second tube with a grate on top), then the lift station must also be accessible to be serviced (the big round concrete slab at the top of the photo) and finally, the electrical connection must be above grade, that’s the gray cylinder next to the lift station cap.  I am told there is an alarm on the lift station that will sound if the motor on the pump is broken.  The only thing I was able to conceal is the aerator exit vent (not sure if that is it real name, but air is flowing through it) that is located around the side of the house.  A buried pipe connects it back to the baffled tank.

I have definitely learned more about septic systems than I cared to.  Thank you for hanging in with me if you are still reading this!

Temporary Construction & Logistics

Talking with my contractor Steve this week, we both agreed that new construction on an unimproved site is definitely easier than remodeling on an already occupied site.

As we discussed the schedule for the next few weeks, I have become more acutely aware of how difficult our lot is for construction access, and how this impacts the speed at which we are able to move forward!

We actually have a nice sized lot.  Its about a half an acre that has frontage on both Brookside Road, and at the rear of our lot, Eton Road.  Its flaw for our project is that it is very narrow…300 feet (the size of a football field) from front to back.  The front yard is dedicated to septic field (read, no construction equipment on the field!)  and one long 75 foot driveway.  I mistakenly thought that access from Eton Road at the back would make things easier…of course not!  Because of the many heritage trees populating the back yard, we are essentially limited to a wheel barrow!

Our neighborhood adds another glitch; the roads are very narrow and construction traffic commands the entire width of the road.  There is no trying to pass a dump truck or any of its friends.  Right now our neighbors are being very good natured about the whole process, however, I may have to learn to bake cookies to buy back their affection!

This leads me back to my topic:  Logistics.  The only access we have to our property is the driveway.  Although the 25 foot width at the garage has been helpful for storing some things, like a dumpster, the 12 foot width at the road really limits us to one construction trade at a time!

cleaning up the mess in the driveway from tree removal

This week started with the aftermath of the tree removal.  The trees had been cut down and chipped over the weekend, however, there were plenty of debris and logs to be removed & transported in order to make the driveway usuable for something bigger than the bobcat!

The next task was temporary construction.  In order to get passage to the backyard, crews need the driveway and the remaining garage slab in place for driving their equipment.  Remember the gas line running across the garage about 8 feet in the air?  This lifeline to our house, definitely needed to be rerouted.

temorarily moving the gas line

Monday morning, Steve also arrived to dig a trench in front of the garage slab so the new, flexible gas hose could still span the width of the garage to bring us the gas needed for our cooktop, the dryer, the hotwater heater and eventually the boiler.  The plumber also was here Monday morning to cut the gas pipe from the meter, install a 50 foot hose and connect it to the house, and then relight all the pilots on the afore mentioned appliances.   The gas line is now safely below the top of the driving surfaces so construction can continue to travel over it during the next few weeks of continued demolition and then new construction!

The gas meter

The other issue with this gas is the location of the gas meter.  It is actually sitting in its final location, however, it too, will need to be relocated temporarily during the next phase of this project.  Our plans call for lowering the garage slab about 3 -1/2 feet to the same level as the lower floor in our house.  As you can see from the photo, the meter is rather close to the soon to be removed slab and its foundation.  I am sure the excavator is a very careful operator but that is a huge machine with a very large bucket.  Perfect, just move the meter to the east 10 feet to the lot line.  It would be so nice if everything was so easy and straight foward!

The gas line to the house runs 75 feet to this location along the edge of the driveway.  When we lower the floor of the garage, the consequence is we lower the driveway.  All 75 feet of it will be graded to a new elevation.  That gas line is currently buried 2 feet below grade.  The result:  the entire gas line needs to be relocated and buried 3 feet lower than its current location.  Logistics:  this all must be done before we can continue the demolition of the garage.  I believe the gas company, with their big truck, will be visiting us this week!

Temporary drainage at the front of the house

and temporary drainage at the back of the house!

Note the temporary downspouts!  Not pretty, I know, and if it did not rain in northern Illinois I would not have been as concerned about my downspouts!  Over the years of living here, I have come to know the importance of the downspouts and their location!  There used to be gutters on the garage that picked up this rain water.

Finally, we leave in a few hours for vacation.  Some people have to make sure their pets will be taken care of while away, we had to find someone to babysit our cars!  Our village does not allow overnight parking on the streets in the neighborhoods.  The past couples of weeks we have made the early morning shuffle of moving cars (3) out of the driveway to other off-road locations around the block.  We will take one car to the airport parking lot, friends picked up one car last night to use while we are gone, and John’s cute little Miata (I am so glad it is so small) is parked on the only patch of the front lawn that was not fenced off!  John thinks it makes the port-a-potty look much better!