Monday, April 28, 2014

Day 22: Rain, Rain, Go Away

Monday

I've come to learn that rain and foundations don't mix. Or more specifically, rain and big holes in the ground don't mix. Unless you're shooting for a pond, in which case rain's a good thing. We were supposed to start our foundation last Monday, but our contractor was behind and pushed us to Wednesday, and then Friday. And now the rain's pushed us some more. We have several inches of standing water in the corner of our basement hole, which is having trouble evaporating since it keeps raining.


Side note: we drove up Sunday evening to look at the rain and mud, and ended up getting a a lot closer look at the mud than we'd have liked. I drove the van off the gravel and onto the clay, and immediately realized it was a bad idea. The van started sliding sideways slowly, tires spinning in the mud. Fortunately, Mandy had her mud boots and and jumped out to take some pictures. I meanwhile called Steve for a tow. I ended up being able to carefully get the van unstuck without the tow, and backed up the 1/4 mile drive in reverse.



We did manage to make a tiny bit of progress on utilities. The trencher and mini-excavator that will be putting in our underground line were dropped off today. They didn't do any work that I can see, but at least they're there. It will be good to have power at the job site. Maybe I can use it to run a small sump pump to get rid of the water in the basement.



All this delay is OK, because it gives us more time to work out the details of other undecided aspects of our build. We're finalizing the window sizes and brand. They have to be determined in advance since we're building a SIP (Structural Insulated Panel) house, which comes in large pre-cut panels with the holes for windows and doors already installed. Window shopping is hard stuff. There's a ton of info out there about a ton of different windows, and everyone has an opinion about which window is the best, but there's really no way to objectively measure them against each other. Comparing them is difficult because 1) you have to go to different locations to see actual windows, 2) prices are hard to come by for all the specific options and features, and 3) the government Energy-Star figures for windows really don't tell the whole picture about which window is the most energy efficient (surprise, surprise). I'll go more into our decision on what we used and why in a future post.

No stats today, as there really hasn't been any work done since the last posted stats.

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