With all the steel on site, we can start putting the piers in place for the retaining walls. Note, these retaining walls are not even for the ADU, they’re to stabilize the site of the main house. Also, they’re much more extensive than the “retaining walls” that were in place before the fire. So, our builder has placed piers, using a staggering eleven truck loads of concrete in one day.
If you’re familiar with our site, you may be looking at this picture and thinking, “Golly, that looks like it extends much farther down the driveway than it did before.” You would be correct. The fire inspector wanted a big space to turn around trucks, and the soils engineer said that if vehicles were going to be moving around on that bit then the slope needed reinforcing. I suspect that this is the kind of thing that gets some mountain folk cranky about regulations. Me, I’m happy to build a turn-around for fire trucks; I just wonder if they’ll ever come use it.
Meanwhile, with the ADU permitted, there’s literal groundwork to be done. As well as the surprise concrete box that needs removal, there are utility lines that need putting in: water from the well to the tanks, water from the tanks to the ADU (and, since we’re doing plumbing at the tanks, sure, water from the tanks to the main house), power from the meter up to the tanks (for the pressure pump), power from the meter up to the ADU, septic from the ADU down to the new septic tank. And, while we’re running pipes up and down the hill, go ahead and put in an extra conduit so we can run something else up there — data, or something.
The Quintana-Beitzel Coprosperity Sphere 