EXCAVATION TIME

EXCAVATION TIME

Excavation week! What fun!

Ted set an outline for our house (orange lines) and then started digging.

Ted and David use a laser line to check the depth of the hole as they go to make sure the basement walls will be at the proper height compared to the ground level at the entrance doors.  

Bob Bauer from Superior Walls stops in to see how things are going and to see if we are on target for delivery. Superior Walls of North Carolina are constructing our basement walls. They are delivered to our site after they are built in the factory. This is really amazing construction – check it out – www.superiorwallsnc.com

With so many large boulders on our property we were worried that Ted would have to blast at some point during the excavation. Fortunately there were only two spots that needed extra attention. One was a vein of white stone. Ted finally removed it after chipping away at it for a long time. The other was this corner I have my foot on. Ted is bringing in a jack hammer for this one.  

We set up the model on the site so we could check sun angles and view directions again. The model we built looks so tiny compared to the actual space. Can you see it? It is on the ground next to me.  

We are utilizing passive solar through the windows during the winter to help warm the house. They are designed to let a certain angle of light penetrate (warm winter sun). The slope on this side of our property actually faces west and we don’t want to capture the setting sun – nice for watching a sun set but not nice in the middle of summer when the sun is really hot. We don’t want that much heat entering our home. We placed the majority of windows to the south, a few east, south/east in my healing room, and a panel of windows south west (the house curves so it was sort of hard to avoid, plus the view is hard to resist).

My healing room faces the direction of the road so we decided to create a berm. We utilized a lot of the boulders that were excavated. We are going to transplant some of the Mountain Laurel that was removed during the clearing process. It may also be where I put my herb garden.