The foundation wall was completed this week and backfill began! It’s crazy to look at the garage construction site and see something that more closely resembles the beginning of a garage. It’s also strange to think that we could see the footings/wall and the hard work that went in to them, and now they’re (mostly) buried – forever!

Here’s more details on what was worked on this week:

On Tuesday, form work was completed, and they began pouring the rest of the foundation wall. They brought in a special pump truck to put the concrete where it’s supposed to go.

The pump truck attached to the concrete mixer and away they went!


The operator in the red construction hat is using a remote control to control the pump and arm! Cool side fact: he worked on the Zion Nuclear Power Station decommissioning. He was in charge of moving the spent nuclear rods. He’s probably radioactive.





On Wednesday they came and took down the forms. It was neat to see the foundation wall before backfill began. I almost wish they could have kept it like this for us to admire for a while, but I’m glad they’re moving at a quick pace!


They began backfill on Thursday, using the soil that was already there, and bringing in several (at least five!) trucks of pea gravel to fill the inside, and two trucks of crushed stone for in front of the garage door opening.


They completed backfilling on Friday and began grading the inside of the garage. We had them remove the existing concrete pad that will be in front of the new garage, because it got busted up from the heavy equipment. You can see that it’s been removed in the image below:

On their to do list for next week is to finish grading the inside of the garage, then put down insulation and wire grid. After that, Steven and I (and maybe a friend will help?) are going to attach hydronic radiant heat tubes to the grid using one zillion zip ties, then they pour the slab on top of that. Here is a drawing of the tubes that our amazing architect (ME) drew (ha, after Steven drew it on grid paper):

Click to see larger

We’re supposed to get a lot of rain this weekend and we’re nervous about what that’ll do to the garage site, especially if that water is trapped underneath the garage space with no where to go because the ground is already so freaking saturated. We put some tarps out today, and we’ll see how much rain we get! Eek!

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