And so it begins. By eight o'clock this morning at least five pick up trucks had descended on our front yard, and soon a large group of Carhart wearing workmen were banging away in our basement and digging outside. The digging went fairly smoothly (it seems that the urban myth that our side yard was a gully filled in with soil from across the street might be true based on the sandy, relatively rock free soil). The main issue was that our sewer pipe is exactly where the footing was supposed to be. The decision was made to have the footing six inches above the pipe.
In the basement, the men built forms up against the brick foundation. Because we only have a single layer of 150 year old brick holding up our house, the structural engineer recommended that the foundation wall be reinforced with concrete. The new concrete slab will also be exerting a lateral force up against the wall. While they are down there pouring concrete, we also asked that they create a small knee wall. It turns out that our basement floor is four to six inches below the bottom of the boulder foundation. They also demolished buried cinder blocks that held up the oil tanks we removed last year.
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