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.