The Pipe

With the main stem walls poured and curing, excavation continued for the retaining wall next to the neighbor's driveway.  During excavation, we found that there was a 3 inch city pipe buried next to the driveway on our lot.  The City gave us no indication that there was a pipe there, it was discovered only during excavation. We called the city and asked about it, and sure enough, when they city approved our plans, the person doing on the review forgot to turn on the city pipe layer in their CAD maps.  If they had noticed this pipe during the review, they would have denied our permit, since a retaining wall cannot be built within 5 feet of a pipe.  But if the had noticed, we would have adjusted our plans and moved the retaining wall away from the pipe.  Now that the footer and stem walls are poured, we can't just simple move everything over to the right.  The City asked us to go back to the engineer and evaluate what would be necessary to backfill with the pipe in place.  This took time and money. The engineer came up with a plan to put a half-sack slurry around the pipe, which cost us extra.  I think in the end we worked it out, but it did take over a month and several thousand dollars to resolve.

Pouring the Stem Walls

Here's a photo of the Wall Company pouring the cement into the stem walls.  Again, it was a very efficient operation, using the cement pumper.

Stem Wall Forms

With the footers poured and cured for a few days, the Wall Company came back and erected the forms for the stem walls.  The walls were quite impressive, with some of the taller ones coming in at over 12 feet tall.  Eventually, they will be backfilled, but nonetheless, it was quite an impressive structure.

View of Rebar Inside the Stem Wall Forms

Pouring the Footers

The Wall Company used a large cement pumper to pour the cement into the footers.  It probably took only a half hour with 7 dump trucks to compete the whole pour.  Quite an efficient operation.

Forms for Footers

With the dig for the footers complete, the next step was to create forms and setup rebar to hold the cement for the stem wall footers.  Behind the footers is another example of why we needed a hard dig.  The footers step down and zig-zag back and forth down to the bottom of the driveway.  The foreman at the Wall Company said he was very impressed with the footer design: having a lot of turns in the footers makes the entire structure much more stable, as compared to just two long straight footers with only one 90-degree turn in the corner.

Hard Dig

Since we were building on a hill that's close to the South Mountain, there was a strong possibility that there would be a "Hard Dig," where the workers would have to use a jack hammer to break apart large rocks or granite; basically part of the mountain.  In the foreground, you can see the large orange jack hammer that attaches to the excavator.  Next to the jackhammer is a very large pile of rocks and dirt that came from the hard dig.  Fortunately, the jackhammer was able to do the job and the workers didn't have to resort to dynamite.

Just for reference, the orange part of that jackhammer is over 10 feet long!

Some of the Hard Dig Wall

Rocks

We can start to see the area where the excavator dug out for the foundation footer stem walls, leaving a large pile of rocks.  Further to the right, we can see where they cut into the neighbor's driveway to make way for our retaining wall where out driveway will go.  The neighbor's driveway was actually on our lot by a few feet, so the workers cut some of their driveway.

Excavator

Part of the lot prep is to excavate large rocks and dig out the areas where the footer walls will be. The Wall Company used a large excavator to do most of the job.  Here it's parked on top of a large pile of rocks. Eventually, to the left, will be the footer walls, and further to the left will be the driveway.

View of Lot Before Breaking Ground

Here's a view of the lot before we broke ground.  The double-cactus, grand and impressive, was a prominent feature of the lot. It was beginning to look diseased, and quite frankly would have been in the way of most of the construction. So, unfortunately, we had to take it down.  This photo will be emblazon its grandeur forever.