I hired my favourite excavator to dig the row house basement. I knew the rowhouse would be extra tricky given the sunken patio and walkout cut. All of this means more excavation, more accuracy and more backfill. The sunken patio took an extra day to dig. I’ve already complained that my cribber is charging me the same price to crib the tall walls of the sunken patio as the remainder of the three basements.
Next we underestimated the volume of dirt to come out of the hole. The city has restricted dumping at landfills such that the only available dump zone was the south Calgary health campus. That would be a huge commute. We decided to dump the surplus dirt at my other Killarney house so we could retrieve it later. This saved the round trip commute of 10 gravel truck loads. That may have saved 20 hours of travel time that was better invested in digging than trucking.
The excavator was still digging as the surveyors arrived to mark out the footings. Enough was marked out such that the footing crew can begin right away. We’ve got the cribbers lined up to start as soon as they finish another Killarney row house only 10 blocks away. Sometimes I get lucky with scheduling and other times it is a total fiasco. Today was definitely on the lucky side to have a free dumping zone and to have the surveyors and footing supplies arrive at the proper time. Now we need a little luck with the weather ...
a lot of dirt and nowhere to put it. We need a lot of backfill so we left dirt in the front yard and back yard, and even at my other site.