It has been an exciting couple of weeks as we finally received our approved building permit from the county, received power to the lot from the electric company, and poured the foundation footers. The footers proved to be the most interesting of the three big milestones to see take shape. Since we are on a very steep lot, our footers had a number of steps around the perimeter to follow the grade and our structural engineer designed a very heavy duty lower wall with 80 inch wide footers and steel rebar reinforcements every 6 inches.

It took the concrete crew about a week to form all the footers and set up the rebar. After everything passed the engineering inspection, the concrete pump truck set up in the driveway and four concrete trucks rolled in to supply a total of 34 cubic yards of concrete. The crew worked quickly to pour all of the concrete and set the surface. In all, it took less than 2 hours from the first truck to the last.

There is something about having concrete poured on the lot that makes this whole project start to seem real at last. Now we can finally start to visualize the actual house and can’t wait until we start seeing some vertical progress with the foundation walls in the coming weeks.