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Digging the Foundation Footing

The lot we have is fairly sloped and was going to require a fair amount of fill in the south east corner of the building.  When I stood at the location of the the corner of the house after the hole had been dug, I realized that with a 4' frost wall, backfilling the rear yard would be impossible.  We therefore opted to step the footing and backfill to 4'.  The foundation wall will then have about 3.5' exposed.

In any case, the wall would have to be stepped and stepped in several places.  Armed with our plan we had the surveyor mark the foundation corners.  We started digging and taking grades with the transit as we went.  The digging went smoothly.  all the rock that we brought in for the pad was excavated and placed in the centre where it will be used to fill in the foundation for the slab.

The footings are now completely dug out and have been "tracked in" using the excavator.  Tomorrow I will tamp the footing areas for a couple of hours so we have a good stable base for the footings.  The surveyor will mark the final positions for the foundation and we will start forming for the footing on Wednesday....weather pending!





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