Water in the Hole

As I mentioned in my last post, when they dug the hole, the bottom of it was rather wet. Dave went out there this morning with a geotech engineer to look at it. They took a soil sample and looked over the entire layout. From the sounds of it, the engineer wasn't overly concerned. He's going to write up a report and get it to Dave by tomorrow morning with his recommendation. Dave believes that it may be the frog pond behind our lot that may be the source of the water. He talked with the land development company about it and they are "extremely receptive to assist in any way they can." They are going to send out their engineering firm tomorrow or Wednesday to assess the lot, the pond, etc. to determine what the problem might be and what they can do to remedy.
Even between yesterday and today the ground had dried out noticibly. So in the mean time, we're going to let the ground dry out and wait.

Holy Excavated Dirt, Batman!

Excavation 1
Originally uploaded by lander_quill

The permits from the city came in earlier than they had said so Dave fired the start gun and things are off and running. The excavators were suppsed to start digging either Thursday or Friday but they had problems with one of their pieces of equipment. Fortunately, the owner of the company said that he'd come out and dig the hole on Saturday.
We went out and watched him dig for a little while and then came back when he was finished. We noticed that the bottom of the hole had ruts from the Catapiller about 1 1/2 feet deep. He said that he actually had gotten stuck at one point and had to rock himself out.
He's not sure why it was so wet. He's recommending that we get the soil tested, which will delay pouring the footings. Surprise, another delay. Hopefully it won't be too long and they'll be able to get the foundation poured next week. Keep your fingers crossed.

Stakes Anyone?

Survey Stakes 7

Today the surveyors were due on the lot to stake out the house. Dave got to the lot a little bit after they were supposed to be there and found that they had come, done their thing, and left already.
Dave looked everything over and it all looks good. He explained what all the markings on the stakes meant and what the result of the survey was. The good news is that the front/side of the house will have 7 feet of the foundation exposed so we can have a daylight basement on that side of the basement. The driveway will rise a height of 3 feet by the time it reaches the house.
I posted some pictures of the lot with the stakes on it.

Cabinet Doors

We've been tasked to pick out the design of the cabinet doors for the kitchen. Once this decision is made, 1 door will be ordered and given to the interior decorator. From that door, and an interview, she'll know our style and begin shopping for elements of the house. So, no pressure on this decision.
We are going with Crystal Cabinets. As I've stated before, we're going for a "Craftsman Style" house. Based on that, Dave the builder (no relation to Bob) suggested that we avoid miter cuts (45 degree joints) and stick with box cuts (90 degree cuts). Along with the door design, we need to decide on wood and color. We like the look of both the Red Oak and the Alder, which is convenient because those are both the least expensive woods available (inexpensive, not cheap, is our motto.) If you look at the featured home on Thomas David's web site, the kitchen cabinets in that house are Alder.
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Ready...Set....GO!

We closed on the construction loan yesterday afternoon. The new lot is paid for so Dave was able to get the survey. He ran over this morning to apply for the permits. Right now they estimate 3 weeks for the permits to be issued. In the mean time, the surveyers can get out to the lot and stake the borders. Dave will also be able to figure out the elevation of the house. The land slants from the back 186th street-side corner down to the front Nina street-side corner. Hopefully this will mean that we can have a side-daylight basement window.
We were excited during the signing of the documents all the way up to the "Truth in Lending" document. That's the one that says how much money you'll have paid the bank at the end of your loan. Wow! I really didn't need to know that number.

Assessment Finally In

The bank's assessment of the plan finally came back today. We were hoping that it would be more than 5% of what the cost was so that we don't have to bring any money to the closing. The final number came back in at almost $30,000 above cost so we are well above the number that we needed.
That is such a relief. Now we can continue to squirrel our money away in savings so we have that much more to add to the down payment.

2 Green or not 2 Green?

We started looking at geothermal heating and cooling. Here's what we found out:
Geothermal involves the use of wells on your property, piped into the house and into a heat exchanger. The system uses no gas, it is all electric. For our house we would need 5 or 6 wells. Upfront cost is as much as twice the cost of traditional systems. For our house a conservative number would add $10,000 to install a Geothermal system.
Payback on heating and cooling costs is about 3 to 5 years. For the 5 year estimate that works out to a savings of about $166/month. (These are all estimated numbers.)
There is no outside unit for this setup.
The only down side, apart from the increased up-front cost, is that the heat exchange unit seems to only last about 15 years.

I have set up a poll on the right side of the blog to get people's opinions. Please feel free to comment on this as well.