South Central Oklahoma Farmhouse

[Pat]

Well, we been scratching in the dirt by fits and starts. First dirt scratcher gave me a fixed bid and when his experience and equipnment proved to be inadequate he bowed out voluntarily in favor of a more heavy duty industrial approach. I now have a track hoe with a 4 ft dide bucket, an Extend a hoe, a D-6 cat, two 10 wheel dump trucks approaching the two week mark.

I drove dump truck for 2 1/2 days and a Bobcat with 500 lb hammer chisel on the front for 1 1/2 days. I spent a couple days in a trench with a jack hammer and 2 1/2 days with an air powered rock drill. (1/2 day with electric hammer drill).

I'll toss in some pix to show some stired dirt.
Here is a shot of the excavated basement wall where water was seeping out yesterday when it was cold enough to freeze it. I opt for this shot as the one with the bikini is still being edited in PhotoShop to remove goosebumps.

Patrick

[Pat]

Here is a shot from on top of the NEW dam, made mostly from the dirt excavated from the baement and house site "view improvement."

Patrick

[Pat]

A close inspection of the attached photo shows the temp power installation (breaker box) on a short pole with eth basement excavation below it. This is to the left of the Dakota pickup and backhoe. There is also a glimpse of one of the dump trucks and to the left a trailer mounted air compressor. This shot is from atop the dam of the pond in the foreground.

My wife was a hard negotiator in favor of habitat for flickers and other peckerwoods but finally gave her blessing for removing a lot of dead stumps (trees killed years ago when pond filled.)

This shot is looking north. the red bld is my current shop, silver is hay barn (virtually hidden by trees.

The dirt pile to the left is some top soil scraped off prior to excavating. there were two excavation piles, each many times larger than thte topsoil. The largest was over 30 ft tall and took a day and a half to haul a couple hundred yards with two dump trucks.

Patrick

[Pat]

This is a shot of the track hoe repairing a pond dam and redirecting the overflow path. In the back ground, under the arm of the track hoe, you can see the top of the back hoe sticking up out of the basement excavation. This pond is at least 6 ft down from design water level due to a errosion cut through the dam (prior to my ownership.)
This pond is between the one in previous post and the NEW one.

Patrick

[Pat]

This shot is of the basement excavation. For scale, model is 5'7" without shoes and hat. Large pipe on ground is drain pipe for pond. Anti-errosion collar is laying by it.

The gallon milk jug on top of the temp power pole is weather proof container for cordless phone. It is constructed from two jugs. Cut top off of one and bottom out of other. Use washers and screw the bottom to pole, insert phone base, and cover with top section of jug. so far has weathered consideerable wind a sprinkle and some light snow flurries. If concerned with it "blowing its top" I can bungee the top down using the handle/fingerhole.

The small white pipe sticking out of the side of the basement excavation is a 2 inch water line. It didn't survive the excavation. (House moved subsequent to trenching water line and prior to digging basement.) Not a problem as the line is good to where it is needed.

The strata visible in the shot from the top down are: topsoil (of sorts... will grow weeds) very sandy soil, sand, some kind of course sand stone, virtually impossible to take out with rock teeth on track hoe. I rented Bobcat with 500 lb hydraulic hammer chisel that made about a thousand blows per minute. I used it to help the track hoe. I chiseled out the corners and some of the hardest strata along the walls. It also helped in the hard spots in the trench but forced us to bevel the edges of the trench to get it in.

The water from rain filters down into sand and sits on the rock while slowly running sideways downslope.

Separate from the basement excavation, there is an "L" shaped 4 ft wide trench as deep as the basement with the apex (corner?) of the "L" 5 ft on the other side of the basement corner in the right of this picture. It has drain pipe with cloth sleeve, geotextile, and gravel. It is back filled now (FINALLY!!) and is constantly running clear water at both ends (not a flu joke).

The plan is that once all the water runs out of the basement excavation walls, new water, flowing down slope, will be intercepted by the trench with the drain pipe.

I will still put two perimeter drains around the basement foundation, one inside and the other outside, draining to the pond downslope. This drain system has 4 each 4 inch rigid drain pipes, two for inside and two for outside the foundation. Given the hassle of having to dig one of these up if it clogs, I elected to be doubly redundant. These pipes are in and partially back filled. They share a trench with the intercepting drain pipe for about 1/3 of the way to the pond (down slope 1/3) If one drain should plug (catfish or turtle climbs in and dies) the water level at foundation will rise a couple inches and the water will all go out the other drain pipe. If the intercepting trench works well, there won't be much water to drain with the perimeter drains, just what falls withing a few feet of the house walls between the intercepting trench and the house.

Patrick

[Pat]

Out of temporal sequence "prequel." This is a "befor" shot. Shows intercepting trench line. Tree with pipe in it is a pecan tree that is preserved and appears next to basement in other pix. Pipe is spare 2 inch for water line.

Little yellow back hoe was first dirt scratchers BIG GUN. track hoe on left goes for $85/HR with operator and is a bargain. It moves a lot of dirt in short time.

Red iron in foreground is engineered trusses for 36x48 3 car garage/shop with 21x48 implement and tractor parking addition on side. Bld is exoskeleton only no internal bracing. Nothing but clear span. 12 in 12 pitch roof with 12 ft wall height gives roof peak of 30 ft above slab floor. I'll put in non-load bearing separating walls between garage, shop, and tractor/implement area. It will get a second story inside of the roof with some dormers. Some inside walls will be load bearing to support second floor. Load bearing members are typically colocated with the engineered columns and get lateral rigidity from the columns while not using the columns for carrying weight. Second story will connect directly/seamlessly with second story of house. The garage/shop shares one corner with the house and will be finished to match the house. Approaching the house, the shop/garage will look like a wing of the house (which it actually is). The ridge of the garage roof (and of course the whole garage) is turned 45 degrees counter clockwise as viewed from above. The shop end of the garage bld joins the house with a triangular "slice of pie" shaped area. The tractor and implement storage portion is on the back side of the garage and not seen from the front. From the back yard, you would have to walk quite a ways to see around the end of the building to see into the tractor implement area.

Patrick

[Pat]

Shows basement excavation looking south. Curved line of back fill receding toward south shows intercepting trenchline where it hooks to right and joins the trench to the pond used by drain lines for foundaton drains. They join well downslope of basement so no water diversion compromise was made. Center forefround is the center of the "L" shaped inteercepting trench.

[Handyman]

Knowing a little bit of what it cost to even rent some of that equipment... I'm sure glad I'm not having to pay for your excavating bill ... [img]/forums/images/icons/smirk.gif[/img]

[Pat]

Handyman, Thanks for your sympathy(?) My thought was that if you're going to have to break a lot of eggs, you might as well try to make an omlet. I needed to get the one dam repaired AND I have to haul off the excavated soil from the basement etc. Better to get some use out of it than just spreading it in a field.

The cosmetic part, i.e. removal of a lot of dirt to improve the view was not a very costly operation as there was no hard digging. Most of the cosmetic part came to about $2K.

I may be doing a bit more to prevent water problems with the basement than is needed but if I fell even a little bit short or had a loss of performance in the effectiveness of the drains a few years down the road it would cost a whole lot more to take care of it then. I am afraid to not use the belt AND suspenders approach.

I'm getting bargain rates for the equipment and the operators are absolutely top notch with 30+ years experience but you are right, all together, it is expensive but well under 10% of the cost of the house.

One economy move was to "reserve" a couple of the smaller dam repairs to do myself. If I had attempted any serious portion of this job with my tractor it would have taken literally years to complete.

Patrick

[egon]

Some real yellow iron.

Egon