Gravel and drain tile

Yesterday was another nice day and the last day of vacation for Brent and me. Like last year, we had a "stay-cation" and visited some Kansas City and Lawrence attractions and restaurants with our son Skylr. Jeremy was visiting grandparents in Seattle and Logan was out of town, too. We decided we should take another look at the progress on the new house since we had a free day at the end of our week.

Rick (our builder) and his son Dave were out at the Farm working which gave us an opportunity to talk. They were busy and dusty - really dusty…in fact, they had been spreading the gravel that surrounds the new drain tile for the foundation. It was a lot of gravel!

Here's a tour around the foundation that shows their work:

We start on the West side where the parking area will be.
Hard to see it, but the "garage" foundation on the north is filled with gravel now - ready for the rebar and floor.

And here is my favorite view of the "front door". You can see the gravel that surrounds the drain tile.

Here is the view from the Southwest corner. The shiny metal stuff over the foundation
and insulation is the termite shield. The ground plumbing inside the foundation is now covered with gravel too.
There will be rebar, insulation and PEX tubing put in before the slab is poured here.

Here is the view of the South side of the house (with the beautiful mass walls).

This is the Southeast corner. This is the lowest corner of the grade around the house.
So this corner is where the drain tile will drain to and away from the house - and there
are the tubes that are the drain tile.
Those tubes were rolled up inside the foundation in previous posts.

This is the view from the North. It's easy to see why it took twice as much gravel as we anticipated.
Also easy to see why Rick and Dave were covered with dust!

You may notice in the last photo that there is a lot of foundation showing on the North side. That will actually be below grade when all is done. So we will be building some significant retaining walls and back filling as soon as the slabs are poured.

We spent a lot of our time yesterday discussing the placement of those retaining walls with Rick. Our hope is to use natural stone. There are several trees (most notably the maple on the west side of the house) that we are trying to preserve. The "rock guy" will help us determine the best way to place the walls. It's pretty hard to envision where they will be at this point.

All I know is it's going to be awesome - heck, it already is :-)