Fall rains have started, and last year it rained every weekend in October and most of November. So Shawn didn't want to risk a repeat of that, so he decided to rent an excavator to run the utilities to the house. The didn't have the mini one he wanted, nor the next in size, so we had to go with a medium sized one. On Thursday, we ordered 2 truckloads of sand to use in the trenches, and they arrived in the evening.Evan loved to watch the big big big big big dumb trucks (as he puts it), and has been playing in the sand piles every day since.
Theexcavator arrived on Saturday at 9 am, and, of course, Evan was excited about the big equipment. He had to go for a ride in the excavator with daddy and helped pull levers for a little while, then got bored and went back to the sand piles.
This is what the house looked like by Sunday afternoon. Looks just like last September, only there's a house there and not just a hole for a basement.We knew that the one utility that would take the longest to do would be the septic line from the new house to the septic. So, Shawn decided to start by locating the septic pipe that runs from the old house to the septic tank, (which if you remember was actually built and sized with the new house in mind when we bought the property five years ago). So Shawn started out with slow, clumsy movements on that thing.
Last year, when the electric company broke through our sewer line close to the old house, the pipe was buried about 4 to 5 ft. below grade. We assumed that the pipe should be buried below the frost level. So Shawn was not expecting to rip through the sewer pipe with the mini-excavator at about 2.5 ft from grade. OOoops.
*Insert expletive of your choice here* It was frustrating because you pay a guy to do things for you, and seems like you have to do things yourself to do them better. We are surprised that septic line hasn't frozen yet, which means it has maintained enough slope so that water hasn't pooled in there long enough to freeze. It could also be that this close to the septic tank, maybe the tank generates heat in the decomposing process and has kept the pipe warm enough to keep from freezing. Who knows.Well, there was no sense in fixing the broken sewer right away since we had to tie the new line to it. Which meant that we had no toilet, shower or sink available to use. Yeah, dishes piled up real fast over the weekend (on top of the dishes that piled up during the week since we like to save them for the weekend) and we were creative with our toilet needs.
Our friend Kaya came to chop up some wood to replace the split wood that we gave him for his fireplace. He was kind enough to buy some extra pipe and fittings to eventually repair that septic line, so that saved us a trip into town.
To lay the new line, Shawn needed to figure out where that new line would go. So now that the septic pipe was located, we took some reference measurements from two corners of the house to the point of connection on the old septic line. Then Shawn used his CAD software to draw out the new line, so that it would come into the front of the house. The perfect septic line would be a straight line from the house to the septic. This is not possible with our conditions, so Shawn designed the pipe so as to not use any bends over 22.5ยบ angles. Also, he needed to take into account the slope of the line, so that waste water will flow down to the septic. So our line gently curves towards the house. After he had his numbers, we measured from different corners of the house for the location of the bends and the layout of the pipe, and spray painted it on the grass.
Shawn was now ready to dig that septic trench. Here's a shot of the excavator starting at the house. Shawn worked his way back to the broken septic line. Oh, and do you happen to remember that black corrugated pipe that we had installed last winter around the house before backfilling the basement to be used for the gutter downspouts to drain? Yeap, Shawn found it all right. I was supposed to keep an eye out for it, and we were doing good, but I turned around to reach for the pipe we were using to measure how deep he needed to go, and riiiiip, there was the pipe. So he was 2 for 2 at this point. That needs to be fixed before we backfill.Then Shawn is happily digging his trench, and he is now about ten feet away from reaching the old septic line when suddenly he hits something and WHOOSH! the ground collapses a bit and black murky water splashed up and it stunk like crazy. An old septic tank.
How ironic. Had Shawn designed the pipe to go over a few feet on either side of the spot he picked, he would have completely missed it. And the thing is that last year when the excavator dug the basement he busted through a bunch of clay pipes, and we were wondering what the heck they were for because the old septic tank for the house was supposed to be partially under the bathroom of the old house. Had we asked for 4 foot trenches around the basement instead of three, the excavator would have found it last year. So that makes us wonder if the guy that installed our septic fibbed a little when he said he couldn't really get to the old septic tank very well, but did fill it with sand when we had the new one built. God does things for a reason. Had the little excavator Shawn wanted been available, it would have had difficulty busting through the steel reinforced concrete box. At least it would have taken a lot longer, and with the medium excavator, it still took about an hour to bust through the thing, get it out of there, and the hole filled with sand. Then he finished trenching for the septic line.
Now, he went to work on digging the trench for the water line to go from the meter pit of the rural water company to the water line that we buried under the footings last year. See what white pipe sticking up? Before we backfilled the basement, Shawn put that pipe over the water line so we could find it again when it was time, and to keep us from damaging the water line when we excavated it. It was time now.The water line runs in front of the garage. Even though we are burying it 5 ft. below grade, which should be plenty to stay below frost depth, I am concerned that the slab in front of the garage will be right above it. That concrete can get so cold that it can push the frost level deeper into the soil. So to protect our water line, we will be putting a layer of 2" Blue foam over the top before we backfill to help insulate it.
Here's Shawn digging the waterline trench in front of the garage. He's getting pretty good by now with the excavator and work is going faster (except for the billions of rocks in this hill. He got out some nice big ones)When the rural water company installed the meter pit, the installed 5 ft of pipe beyond the meter pit for us to tie into it and put a stake at that location. (Perhaps they have enough experience with people trenching right into the meter pit and braking it) Anyway, by the end of the day Saturday, Shawn had about three feet to hit the stake.
On Sunday, he finished trenching to the stake, and not wanting to be 3 for 3, he decided to be cautious this time and reach the pipe by digging with a shovel. Of course, the rural water people did their job right and that pipe was buried about 6 ft into the ground. Also, the long stake was pushed when they backfilled, so it was actually at an angle, and the end of the pipe was actually about three feet farther away than where the stake poke out of the ground. After about an hour of shoveling, and that stake kept going lower and lower and at an angle, Shawn decided to hop back on the excavator to help speed things up. And no, he didn't hit the pipe. He excavated down about 4 feet right over the pipe and shoveled out the last foot. At last, that pipe was visible.
Shawn laid down the water line in the trench, and began to hook it up. Here is is making the connection at the house. The blue pipe is the one the plumber buried last winter when he did the basement under slab plumbing before the basement slab was poured. Now Shawn goes over to the other side to tie into the rural water pipe. Uh oh. That water line is not flexible water line (like the black and blue ones). Instead is CPVC rigid pipe. Drats, we don't have the right fittings for that. I guess we still needed a trip into town.So Shawn set aside that project, and went back to the sewer line. He laid down and dry fitted the septic line to make sure it would fit within the trench (he kindof drove over the paint line when he was digging and may have been a little off) and to make sure things were right, and also to set the correct slope up to the house.
Then he began to glue the pieces together. You can see the fixed broken sewer line waiting to be glued back to the old one at the bottom left of the picture.Then there's a wye connection where the new line ties into the old one, and from then on goes back to the house. One particular joint didn't go all the way in before the glue set, but Shawn thought it was good enough.
He got all of the pieces glued, except for the last one. That one will have to wait until we drill a hole through the basement wall to go into the house. Technically we should have located a sleve in the wall before it was poured so that we didn't have to drill through it. But without knowing where exactly we would tie into the septic tank, we couldn't locate that hole, so we couldn't do that.
After glueing that septic line, Shawn went to work on the window well area. This is where the electric line will come into the house, but we also decided to change the grade level here and we're lowering it about two feet. This will do two things: 1) reduce the soil pressure on those window wells which are bowing a bit. 2) We can lower the window well level and we'll have a better view out of those basement windows. Nice.It's a bit rough, but you can see the exposed wood of the window wells. That will get cut off. In between the two window wells is the trench for the electric line.
I'll have to finish this on Friday since I have to go now.
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