whats involved w/Finish grading property

[dirtwhisperer]

Looking into building a new house and buying CUT. I was thinking to help justify the cost of the CUT for the property, to buy before house is done - to do the final grading and backfiling/leveling of soil. I would have the contractor come in and dig foundation and remove topsoil from road to foundation for driveway Also bring in stone for driveway. have him dig all utility lines and well as the septic mound. I could then backfill foundation and finish grade around the house and do the seeding with the CUT. Also fill trenches from elec/phone linesIs there anything special to backfilling the foundation once the contractor says to ? Do they separate the top few inches of good topsoil from the more claylike dirt when they dig the foundation ? Any suggestions ? Haven't got the breakdown on prices to piecemeal the excavation yet - but I would think that by breaking the "rough grading" and "final grading " apart, I could save some since he wouldn't have to return with his equipment . Any suggestions ?

 

[Currmudgeon]

I think I'd have the excavating contractor do the mass backfill around the foundation wall. The backfill needs to be properly compacted and he'll have the tools, as well as a checkbook in case he screws up.

Same thing with the trench backfill. The contractor who dug them usually backfills as he goes. I don't think you'll save much by excluding that work, and you have an additional safety problem from open trenches until you finish your backfill. The backfill needs to be compacted, and failure in that area can leave you with sunken areas.

Genarally, topsoil is stripped as the first stage of excavation and stockpiled on site for reuse. I would be sure the excavator does this.

Depending on your soil type, fine grading would be FEL, box scraper, and landscape rake work. Depending on how much disturbed land you have, this should be well within the capabilities of a CUT. It will take some time, which will be compounded by the learning curve.

Talk with your excavating contractor. He may be able to set up his work so you can benefit from the DIY effort.

 

[dirtwhisperer]

I've heard of foundation walls "pushing". Is this a possible result from improper backfilling methods ? If so - then I won't touch that responsibility. As it sounds more complicated than just using the FEL to put dirt back around the foundation.

The soil is composed of 0-3" Dark brown silt loam; 3-17 yellow-red clay; 17-27 dark red clay. From there -not sure. DO contractors typically use the house foundation dirt to level around the lot first - then from a separate pile distribute the top few inches of topsoil for seeding or just put in one big pile and when they get to the bottom of the pile - they know it is the topsoil ?

 

[MicroPilot]

Around here they usually take a bulldozer and scrape off the top soil into a pile. This is then used to put the finish grade down when all the backfilling is done.

 

[TC18guy]

Pushing the walls in is usually caused by the weight of the equipment getting to close to the foundation wall - especially before the floors and walls are on them to support them. I doubt if you could do much damage with a CUT, but if would take a long time. Also if the contractor were to damage the wall it would be his penny, and his insurance. if you did, well...

They would make seperate piles for top soil and other fill. Usually clays and heavy soils would be spread out or hauled away and not used for backfilling. I would let the excavator do the backfilling and spread the top soil, there would still be plenty of finish work to do before you could seed that a CUT would be good for.

 

[dariusr]

In our old neighborhood, a new house foundation wall was cracked (pushed?) due to wet fill and probably operator error. They had to re-excavate the wall and put in a second wall as well as a bunch of leakage prevention. Put the house off schedule a good month and once built, they have had water problems in the basement continually.

I might be inclined to have them do the foundation backfill.

 

[Currmudgeon]

</font><font color="blue" class="small">( They would make seperate piles for top soil and other fill. Usually clays and heavy soils would be spread out or hauled away and not used for backfilling. )</font>

Depends on the location and the contractor. In Northern Illinois and Indiana, most fill, even structural fill, is compacted clay. We have a lot of it. Ideally, we try to avoid paying to haul dirt off the site and then paying to import more. Clay fill takes careful control to achieve proper compaction. You need to monitor and control the moisture content and use heavy equipment for compaction, and then measure the compaction. For landscape fill, it doesn't make much difference, and you can use almost any old stuff. If there is unsuitable material on site, like excessive topsoil or muck, we try to find areas that are of no structural significance, like lawns and gentle slopes, and "lose" the unsuitable material there.

The final site grading would be held 4 to 6 inches low, and the topsoil would them be respread and fine graded to cover. Grading the topsoil can be a little tricky, as you only have 4-6" to work with, and you dom't want to cut through that into the underlying clay.

 

[GrayBeard]

One of the key elements to a dry , "non-pushing " basement wall is apporpriate drainage around the perimeter.
You need a good "french drain" and (lots of)limestone backfill .
In your area you should have plenty of 1B or 2B limestone available. The stone will not push from water weight as dirt or clay will.And it allows proper drainage down to the french drain.
Of course you'll still need a good waterproofing on the exterior of your walls.
GrayBeard

 

[keeney]

I contracted my own house and used my litle JD 4100 for a bunch of stuff.

Hired an excavator to dig the main foundation - they stripped off the topsoil and put it to one "end" of the pile.

I did all the foundation drainage work myself - loaded about 30 yards of pea-gravel on top of corrogated poly drain pipe and then put filter mesh over that before the remainder of the back-filling.

We used a bituthane rubber membrane for water-proofing because it was the thickest, most durable thing I could apply myself without any special tools - just unroll, peel, and stick the 100' x 3' thick rolls of asphalt-coated rubber onto the concrete. In areas of the house where we felt drainage may be an issue, we also put in farbic-covered dimpled plastic stuff I can't remember the name of to drain everything down to the drains at the bottom. We used 1/4" siding insulation to cover the remainder of the bituthane to protect it during back-fill.


We then did all the back-filling ourselves. It took a while. Seemed quick at first for the walk-out side of the house near the pile where the foundaiton was only 54" deep, but by the time we got to the 9' deep side way around the other side of the house from the pile, it was a lot of trips back and forth from the pile.

We did not compact this backfill because I did not want to stress the still-curing concrete basement/foundation walls. After about two years of freeze-thaw, though, the deepest sections sank about 18". Before final grade and sod, we just made sure the slope was properly away from the house in these settled areas. We did not build anything structural over the back-fill.

The 4100 was great for loading in the sand fill on the inside of the house under the basement slab - just drove right in and was maneuverable enough even with lots of piers and structual walls in the way.

At one point during the rough grading process, the project was a bit behind, and we hired the excavator to come back with a large track-loader to move the bulk of the dirt to the right places arund the yard.

I did some of the final leveling and raking of debris with my 4100 and a landscape rake.

They also came back with the track-loader to cut the driveway into and through part of a slope. Hauled out about 6 loads of clay and replaced most of it with class-5 graded limestone.

The concrete guys had their own bob-cat to final level stuff under the flatwork, but my 4100 still did a bit of moving of crushed rock and such becaue it was handy in the tighter space inside the garage, for example.

The sod installers brough in their own bobcat with grading bar to spread the 6" of hauled-in black dirt we put under the sod in the front yard. Mostly because I didn't have time at the time.

The little 4100 was capable of doping almost anything we would have had to hire-in or rent a bobcat for.

Bottom line, its not clear we "saved" any money having the small CUT on-site. It was damned convenient, though and did save a heck of a lot of time on all the misc. things you always have to move around. If I had it to do over again, i would find a good used, rubber-tracked-skid-loader with a bucket, set of forks, and a mini-back-hoe thingy. I'd rent a tiller, trencher, grading bar, etc for it as needed.. I'd hire out all the big-excavator work. Then when the house was done, sell the track-loader and get a smaller cut for cutting grass, plowing snow and misc. landscaping.