In this segment of DIY's Be Your Own Contractor, the contractors continue discussing the process of excavation. One die-hard do-it-yourselfer, Fred Samuels, talks about his decision to take on the project himself -- by hand.
Excavation
- Fred Samuels began with the idea of constructing a stand-alone storage building. On a whim, he began digging the footing for his building himself using just a pick and shovel. Eventually, the "storage building" would evolve into a 1400-square-foot country house (figure A) on 180 acres of family-owned land. Fred and his wife moved into the house following Fred's retirement from a job as a department-store display designer.
- Fred wanted to keep heavy machinery off his property, and out of his house-building project, to minimize the destruction to the land. Once heavy machines begin work, they take control of the property in a manner that some home-builders don't like. Since Fred was retired and had time on his hands, and because he wanted to keep tight control on the way the land was handled, he began digging the house footing himself (figure B).
- The excavation and footing was only the beginning of what would become a lot of hard work for Fred. He participated in pouring of the foundation (figure C) and was responsible for almost all of the subsequent building including raising the walls, framing (figure D), etc.
- Fred acknowledges that taking on this type of project himself led to a lot of fatigue and muscle-aches, but found those setbacks to be temporary and the feeling of accomplishment to be worth the physical effort. He considered the hard-work and focus of building the house (figure E) to be a therapeutic solution to life's stresses.
- Doug Kerr of Los Angeles, CA took the more standard route of using heavy machinery to conduct the excavation for his home-building project.
- As Skip Weahunt points out, an important (and often overlooked) consideration in the excavation phase is the disposal of the large amounts of dirt that may need to be removed. He ultimately had to spend about $6000 to have the large amounts of dirt dug out during the excavation to be removed from his construction site (figure F). That expense was overlooked in his original budget.
- It's also critical to structure your project so that all of the excavation work is done at one time. Otherwise, bringing subcontractors back for subsequent jobs will result in additional expense. Betty King and John Spracklen took this idea one step further. Since they had plans for eventually adding a koi-pond to their finished home (figure G), they went ahead and had the excavation for the pond done while the subcontractors were there to excavate for the house structure.
In the segment that follows, the contractors talk about their various approaches to house foundations.
RESOURCES :
The Brand-New House Book: Everything You Need to Know About Planning, Designing...
Model: 0609805835
Author: Katherine Salant
Full title: The Brand-New House Book: Everything You Need to Know About Planning, Designing, and Building a Custom, Semi-Custom, or Production-Built House
Three Rivers Press
The Well-Built House
Model: 0395629519
Author: James Locke
Mariner Books
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