Saturday, July 27, 2013

Finished Grading, Footings, Plumbing, and Water



Building a house is a great exercise in learning to let go. Let go of control. Let go of perfection. It's never going to be perfect and I really have no control. No matter how hard I try to control things so that there are not any problems, problems arise. I'm learning to accept them and move on. Keep moving forward. What's done is done. A master class in Zen.

Some pictures of the progress so far thanks to my amazing team of dedicated workers:

All the dirt that got dug out is being put back in.















New dirt being brought in to build the house pad up. The height of the house was decided by my drainage and grading engineer. There is some height to prevent the house from flooding from rain runoff and it looks a bit awkward from places because my neighbor's property to the north is much higher than my neighbor to the south.























Smoothing it out









 The hole made from the soil test




Finished. Just to get dug up again for footings and plumbing.
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Spray painting house outline and footings (cement frame in the ground to support the foundation and load bearing walls)














Digging out the  house edges for footings. Royelio (in blue) is in charge of the concrete work.














































































Digging trenches for drain plumbing. Water in trench was from heavy rain.












 Digging to attach drain to sewer




















Brother plumbers, Joel and Jose





Water main line. Bottom to top: fire sprinklers (bottom left), garden sprinklers (right), pressure regulator and house water (top)



Water line from meter



"Pass" sticker for plumbing from city inspector