The Mountain of Dirt

Yesterday's blog was too long... I need to learn to hold something back...  Sorry.

Made some progress today.  The crew showed up fairly early.  It was COLD.  I suppose the Yanks will laugh at this, but there is something about Texas cold...  It cuts into you.  The temps started out in the mid 30's and kept coming down.  Tonight it is in the upper 20's, what they call a hard freeze here...  Ha.  Windy from the North, and by noon we had a pretty good clip of SNOW coming down. 

So, they dug out the sloppy part at the bottom of the pad, and surprisingly, it had pretty good hard clay dirt underneath.  I would estimate they dug out about 18 inchs.  They also dug a little on some soft spots where my daughters bedroom will be, and later on they found a spot under the garage that required further work.  The mountain of dirt that this creates was HUGE.  I am standing on the very top of this at an altitude of about 25 feet to take these pictures.  I doubt anyone will ever stand on that spot again, as after the fill is installed they will use (some) of that dirt to fill in around the edges and taper things off and create a drainage plane away from the house.  BTW, you can see from up here the shape of things, especially the gentle curve of the driveway as it swings around to the apron.  I am happy with the location.

So far, we are in the mid 30's of truckloads of dirt.  The trucks were making a round trip of about 60 minutes, and there were 7 of them or so.  You can imagine that this is not a cheap process, and one of the few things that is beyond our control.  So it takes whatever it takes to fill the hole, make a level pad, and keep all the engineers happy...

Speaking of...as the job progressed today, the field inspector for the geotech company came by to check on the status of things, take samples of the fill dirt, and have a chat with all.  He seemed pretty happy about things but didn't like the "pumping" that was happening under the garage.  The fill is interesting stuff, it is not unlike modeling clay, except has some sand content in it that keeps it from going "plastic" and when you put a bunch down together it creates a structure over the ground.  This structure moves, though, so as things drive across the top it works the soil below up and down.  This action actually causes water in the subsurface to "pump" to the top, and in this case it literally made a little pool of water on the top of the fill.  I am surprised to witness the difference in behavior between regular old dirt on the site and what they haul it.  Regular old dirt looks good for a while while it is being worked, and then it just literally breaks apart and has no structure at all.  The geotech guys will shoot some kind of penetrating beam down into the ground to determine the percentage compaction as we go. 

So, the decision was to shut down for the day, dig this area back out, and let it breathe...  I think perhaps the fact that it was Friday afternoon at about 3:30 PM had even more to do with that decision, because nothing really prevented them from working around these spots, and they have plenty more dirt to haul... 

BTW, I promised a picture of the "Mountain of Dirt"...  Here it is.

I asked a wise old plumber once how he thought something had been plumbed, and he responded "Well, it all depends on what they had on their truck..."  Human behavior perhaps drives building decisions more than we know...  Saturday weather is supposed to be cold, but perfect, mid 50's or so...   Our weather guy has been a bit off on his calls lately....

Have a great weekend.