goin' with the flow

Things were going swimmingly with our house excavation project until last Monday when the driveway came out. Ironically, one of the noisiest days of the project began with the pounding of concrete when Zuzu was sick and needed to stay home. Ty took the morning shift at our casa and called me around 10 am to say, according to our contractor, the soil under the driveway was horrible. At noon I came home and saw a vast expanse of chocolate pudding where our driveway used to be. Three construction size truckloads of goopy mud had to be hauled away.

Around 2 pm the guys knocked on the door with news. When they dug a four foot deep trench the length of our driveway, water started flowing down it. It turned out a river was coming out from under our garage. I could not believe what I saw; Zuzu’s rubber duckie could’ve floated down the current of this thing. Down in the yard water started to bubble up through a newly dug hole. These were not good developments. A test by the city indicated it was all natural ground water; our house was built on top of a natural spring. A friend who works for the city confirmed a creek, which likely went through our property, ran where our street now stands. The whole area was wetlands. The developer filled in the creek and built our neighborhood.

With more drain tile added to relieve the river and a few extra truckloads of rock, the concrete was poured:

We had the fun of entering the house by walking a plank instead of climbing over the front railing. Ty carried Zuzu across it; I think Zuzu would’ve loved to walk the plank but we didn’t want to chance having a little impression of her rump in the concrete.

It’s still an eyesore outside but we are hoping the regrading (and topsoiling, and seeding, and patio rebuilding, and retaining wall replacing, and air conditioner reinstalling, and…) begins in the next few days? weeks? whenever the piles of dirt around our foundation have officially settled. Zuzu can’t wait to see the diggers in action again.