Now I see why I didn't notice this post earlier, it was started before I became a member, anyway, Tom is right, on existing houses we do recycle the rubble and only use the new crushed stone to level the top of the trench to a uniform depth. as a contractor we have to do what we can to keep costs down, but that doesn't mean we are cutting corners by being cheap with materials, the whole idea of the stone is to leave air space between the aggregate leaving a path for water to flow, the smaller the aggregate the smaller the voids, the course concrete rubble allows for custom placement to allow the greatest amount of hollow space around the pipe.
That critical part between the top of the footing and the bottom of the floor I was referring to, is important because though most water comes from under the footing, some can come between the bottom of the foundation wall and the top of the footing and if there is no void or stone bridge there and the floor is poured tight on top of the footing, then that water will push up between the wall and the floor (cove joint), the reason being is that the concrete floor will shrink away from the wall but not off the footing, I have seen quite often where builders feel it's a better to pour the floor on top of the footing thinking it's necessary for support, when in fact they are sabotaging themselves, because even with an otherwise perfectly installed footing drain system, that particular source of water can not make it to the pipe, now the entire perimeter needs to be cut and redone with some sort of footing bridge put in. Could cost up to $10,000. for a large house, and be prevented with a couple wheel barrows of stone spread on top of the footing (1" min) before pouring the floor.
The plank method that Egon mentioned is nice as we use a wheel barrow, unfortunately we only see walk outs (level) or 2-3 steps on about 10% of the jobs, most of the time we're humping pails up the hatchway stairs, even worse, are the houses with no hatchway and everything has to come up a full flight of stairs into a kitchen and out the front or back door, that has to be figured into the cost of the job, made that mistake before!
Just need some heavy rains now, so I wouldn't have this much time for these long winded posts. Yup, I like bad weather, one old timer said I'm like an undertaker waiting for some ones basement to flood so I can get some work.
John,