Well we're getting closer to "D-day" or for me that is Digging day. This Wednesday the excavators are supposed to start the excavation and I hope by the weekend we might have the forms for the footings in place. To this end the Surveyors were there on Friday staking the "corners of the house". This is a critical piece of information as I'll mention later. Now I asked to be there so I could see how this was done. Earlier the Surveyors had taken my blueprints with my dimensions and planned locations and transcribed them to an official survey and using the official survey stakes at the four corners of the property calculated the points where the stakes would go for the corners of the house and garage as well as elevation of the house and garage. So the gentleman, Sam and Dave, came out to stake my house. As I believe I mentioned in my last post I had also staked the house using string and measuring tapes. Sam and Dave however were using the latest laser designating transits, capable of very precise measurements. In the first picture Dave has just setup a laser reflector over one of the four survey stakes.

In the next picture you can see Sam with the Transit and in the third picture Dave is at a second survey stake with the portable laser reflector.

For those who don't know how it's done, as I didn't, what they do is setup their transit and once that is stabilized they took bearing and distance measurements from three of the survey stakes. The fourth was buried in a bush and not easily accessible. By getting these measurements the Electronic computer attached to the transit can calculate the exact spot on the property that the transit is located. I would assume you might be able to do this with just two official stakes however the more you use the better your accuracy. Once the Transit knows where it is it can then be used to tell the surveyors where to go to plot the corners of the house. So once the calculations were done Dave went to plot the first corner of the house while Sam ran the Transit level. What Dave did was place his mobile laser reflector close to where they felt the corner of the house should be. Then Sam would take a reading with the Transit and it would tell them whether they had to move the stake left/right or in/out. Once the Transit advised the crew that the reflector was in the correct spot Dave would then hammer in a wooden survey stake to signify the corner of the house. I was curious as to how I had done and was pleasantly surprised to find that they posted the first stake within 3in of my stake. The only issue was they posted their first stake by my porch stake which was 6ft away from the corner of the house. So I thought to myself maybe they will stake the four corners of the hole that needs to be dug not just the house footings, so I kept my mouth shut. Well once the third stake was installed I knew we had a problem. The second stake matched up with the other corner of the front deck but the third stake was 6ft short of where the end of the house was. So I called a stop and we looked over the information they had to find problem. Turns out that somebody in the office had inadvertently plotted the corner of the deck instead of the house. This meant that all four corners were out by 6ft to the North. The East/West lineup was good and the distance between the house and the garage was good, however the garage by this default was also 6ft in error. So they took a few minutes to work on the computer and compensated all the points for this error. Once this was done they replotted the corners of the house and this time they were with in 3in of where I had my stakes. It looks like my North/South lineup was good but my East/West lineup was in error by 3in. I was 3 inches closer to the property line than they were. The first picture below show Dave setting up one of the house corners. The second shows him setting up one of the garage corners and the third one shows one of the survey stakes and mine.

So now the house was plotted and they moved onto the garage, With the garage I was not as confident on my positions. Well turns out my North/South was out by approx 20in but my East/West was spot on. So not to bad for an amatuer with just string and tape measure and Pythagorean's theorem. However everything was still not perfect. I have a small shed on the back of the garage that is 8ft deep and 10ft wide and is recessed 2ft to the East from the West wall. As they were plotting these corners I noticed a problem. Turns out that the office had extended the west wall into the shed and not done the 2ft offset. So once again back to the computer on the Transit to fix up the coordinates. Once this was done the stakes were corrected and everything now looks exactly as it should. The last thing they did was insert two stakes one near the front of the lot and one near the middle of the lot to be used as grade stakes for the excavator to use to calculate the depth of the hole for the footings so the foundation wall is at the height requested. This is done using the topography of the land. 

On Saturday I went back to the property with my simple Transit level and a measuring stick to see how the elevation stakes worked with the house and garage stakes. Well the house elevation is good however the garage elevation was such that one corner of the garage would have the concrete wall 2in below the level of the current grass. Having a look around told me that I could not remove soil to correct this so on Monday will talk to the Survey crew about changing that stake and raising it by 6in. I believe that all that will happen is to advise the excavation crew to adjust their digging by 6in. 

Well that was all that happened at the lot. At home I started prepping the 14 posts I bought for the deck roof supports. I checked to ensure that one end was square to the post then chamfered the the 4 corners slightly and cleaned the post with wire brush and fibre brush. Once done I gave them 2 coats of Thompsons water seal for initial protection. Two of the eleven footers need to have a small amount of the post removed to allow them to fit on the galvanized post saddle but unfortunately the rain came and I could not complete this before posting this article. However here is one picture showing the posts under work. The front pile is the initial pile the three on the sawhorses are in production and the three to the left are drying after their application of the Thompson water seal. At this time only the 2 that need work are left the rest are all done awaiting delivery to the lot.

Other than that all I did was spend money buying waterproofing material and items for the garage. I might as well buy it now when I get discounts then later on at full price. Every little bit helps and if Lowes is willing to sell me paint at 2 for one and Home Depot is willing to give me 10% discount just for using their credit card who am I to say no thanks I'll pay full price later on when I really need to buy this. 

Well if all goes well we should have some better construction photos for you next week. Until then all the best and have a great week.

Harold