Trenching, No it wasn't supposed to be a Moat

Thanks to the ridiculous amount of rain we've gotten right after we got our building permit, we have been very slow to get started and have been put about two weeks behind our desired schedule at this point. Thankfully we finally had some decent enough weather over the past few days to make some progress.

On Sunday the 16th, the weather broke mid-way in the afternoon and we were able to hang some strings along our leveled plane. We used kite string for this purpose, as it was fine enough not to sag too much under its own weight but strong enough that it could be pulled tightly. We added 2 inches in each direction (so, overall dimensions of 36'x68') so that when we dig the footer trenches there is space for 2" insulating foam and 2" wooden forms around the perimeter of where the house will be sitting (as these materials are not structural and therefore should not bear any load). We then spray painted over the string to create outside lines to dig the trenches along.

After this, we prepped the rigid insulating foam for installation. The boards started out as 2"x4'x8', which was twice as wide as we needed, so we used the scoring on each board to split them in half to 2' wide. The engineering drawings stated that the foam was sealed in plastic, so we purchased a roll of black plastic sheeting and wrapped each of the 24 boards like they were presents.


On Monday the 17th we got the tractor to the site and started trenching at the North-West corner of the house. You can see the 5 pictures below.  Digging was pretty easy as long as the centerline of the tractor was lined up with the trench line.  Problems started to arise within the first 30 minutes, the water level in the bottom of the trench was increasing.  We got most of the way along the back wall and then decided to stop for the day, because we were having some issues with dirt slumping back in the hole.   We tried to bail some water out but it definitely was coming into the trench.  All told it did not take that long (~3hrs) but with the wet ground and water issues we decided to level the bottom and hold off until another day. 

The Trench Begins

We have to go down 3ft and luckily the shovel reaches

Bucket of Dirt

Hmmmm it may be a little wet

Yep, definitely wet, this is what we got done for the day

So we skipped Tuesday and went to work..... :/  Our friendly foreman Al (Bethy's Dad) went to the trench and bailed water out.  It seemed to not be too deep (3-4" at most) but also didn't seem to really be subsiding either.  Hopefully it will dry out before we fill it with concrete.

On Wednesday the 19th we decided it was dry enough and hot enough to continue the trench.  we got to the North-East corner which also necessitated our first attempt to get the tractor over the trench (and hopefully not ruin the trench or end up with a tractor in there either!).  It was a little hairy at times but ultimately successful on both counts.   So we rounded the corner and kept going.  

Some slumping evident from Monday

Our First Corner!!!

And what a nice Corner it is!!!

About halfway through the day we got a random visit from our friendly Town Building Inspector Gerry.  He was glad to see us all hard at work with no slacking going on.  We showed him a bit of our continuous water problem but he actually said that it looked fine and that if it were a foot or more of water he would be worried, but 2 or 3 inches is nothing to worry about (cue sighs of relief).  So on we went and got close to the end before we finally called it a day with just a few more feet on the west side to go.