6/30/11 Update

June has been a busy month - for me, at least. I've had two huge graphics deadlines so there's not been a whole lot of time to work on the house. Things have started to slow down for me so we were able to do some stuff yesterday.

We first surveyed the site and dug the foundation trench over a year and a half ago. Since that was done we've had three major flood events - all last summer within about a 4 week period. There was so much water that the foundation trench flooded, which ran into the septic tank hole and floated the septic tank! (We finally got that re-positioned this spring!) It took me about a month to dig out all the silt that had filled the trench. In some spots as much as 12 inches!!!

We decided that with all that water we had better double check the batter boards to make sure that everything was still square. That's what we did yesterday. It was a good thing, too, because one end was WAY off! Not sure if the batter boards were moved or if they were not positioned correctly to begin with. The rest of the house was right on and with a little futzing, we managed to fix the ones that were off. We measured and measured and measured and are pretty confident things are now square.

When things were first laid out we did not know that code requires 2" foam insulation on the outside of the foundation so the next task is to make sure the trench is the right width to accommodate the foam. It's going to mean we have to widen the trench in some places - not as much as I'd feared, however. I was all ready to start on that today but the smoke from the Las Conchas fire is too thick (and unhealthy) so this task will have to wait until another day or until the wind comes up and blows the smoke elsewhere. In the mean time, Rick is figuring out how much rubble, foam insulation and rebar we will need.

Here's Rick setting up the transit in the NW corner of the house. You can see how smoky it's been. There's actually another mesa in the background that you can't see!