Digging for foundation expansion

Boondox · Jul 26, 2003

Well, I finished digging out all the sand that had washed into the drainage ditches alongside the road. Nice sand. No silty stuff. I figured the town could pay me in sand for all my work saving their road after the torrential rains we had Thursday, so there's a pile of sand the size of a minivan next to the garage.

Looks like I'm going to need it to backfill around the extension I'm building onto my shop. Started on that this morning since I already had the backhoe on. Really slow going! I've never run into so many rocks before, so my bet is this is where the old timers dumped the stone when they were digging out the basement 160 years ago. Of course they've settled a bit in that time, so digging is sort of like taking apart a puzzle. Gotta reposition three times to remove five stones that are keeping me from getting the big honker I really want. And some of them are so big I have to dig ramps to them so they can be slid out and shoved aside. Looking around, I see an awful lot of orange paint on some of those big suckers! /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

Anyway, once I dig it out we can get the concrete guy in here with his forms, etc. Wish I had enough confidence to do it myself, but there's no time to practice on something smaller.

Pete

Henro · Jul 26, 2003

Boondox,

Love to see some pictures if you have any... /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Boondox · Jul 27, 2003

Progress report and a question

Henro -- I started addressing this to Bill, but somehow that just didn't sound right. Guess I'll forever know you as Henro... /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Pics. Yeah, I took some today and will post them tonight if the forecast T-storms don't materialize.

Good news is 1) The huge boulders were all on top. Looks like all the medium sized stone went into the walls and under the big stones were stones too small for walls. Still not as easy as digging in dirt, but the going is faster now. 2) I reached the bottom of the existing foundation.

Bad news is 3) The foundation footings were only 28 inches deep. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif On the other hand, the slab is 50 years old with narry a crack. I'll plant my footings 4 feet down anyway. 4) The side of the existing slab is coated with some sort of asphalt sealer. I'm not sure what impact that will have on my attempts to join the new slab to the old slab. I've heard of this stuff you spray on the old concrete. When you pour the new slab the moisture causes it to expand filling any and all voids. Anybody else have any experience with that stuff?

And I have a single 110V UF line running from the existing shop to my garage 75' away. Since that supplies power to the chick brooder and the electric fencing, I can't have a lengthy power interruption. So it looks like in the short term I'll have to run extension cords from the house while I dig the slab foundation since the UF line runs right through where I'm digging. I also plan on running 240V to the garage with a sub-panel out there. Might as well run the big cable out there now even though it might be months before the 240 is hooked up. So it looks like I'll rebury/replace the 110 line to restore power in the medium term, and connect 240 after the new shop goes up.

Pete