When you have been waiting seven years to dig a hole, to expose the foundation, to see what’s really there, to assess the problem and to fix as required, and the day finally comes, you want two things: You want to be there and you want the sun to shine. When what you are doing is a dig so big that you can’t call it anything but The Big Dig, you can’t have rain. Our planned dig-date coincided with Hurricane Florence making landfall. Here in Virginia we didn’t get the worst of the storm, but we got plenty of rain. Bother. We had to cancel the plan to dig the weekend after Labor Day.

I didn’t want to miss all the fun, but I was heading out west on Sept 20. It kept raining in Virginia and was too wet to dig the weekend of Sept 22-23, and the weekend of Sept 29-30. Finally, the forecast for October 6-7 looked rain-free. And I flew home on Oct 6. It begins!

Joe had said he could take the old front porch off with the excavator, but I thought there might be salvageable wood. Sandy took it apart board by board on Friday.

Except for the steps, which were new a few years ago, he found that the rest was rotted beyond further use.

So it all went in the burn pile.

With no way to get into the front door, this project was officially underway. Now there’s no turning back! A new front porch there will be. But not until we make sure that the front foundation is in no way damaged, in no way compromised, in no way going to cause problems in the future.

Weeks ago, when I was frustrated at being unable to find a contractor willing to do this work and we had determined to do it ourselves (because it had to be done, and you know, it can’t be rocket science), we had talked to Joe about this project. God bless him. He said, “You don’t want to do this yourself” in regard to the excavating. Graciously, without flat-out saying People who have never operated an excavator should not do this work, he implied that such things were best left to those with experience. I am so glad he said what he said, however he said it to make me understand, and I am so glad I listened! This man is a master on that machine! It might not be rocket science, but it’s a skill he has perfected over the years. You don’t rent a machine and figure this out in a morning.

Joe removed a lot of dirt. The piles in front of the house looked like this when he was done.

Coco had to play Queen of the Hill of course!

Joe dug the hole down to the level of the basement floor, leaving the entire front foundation wall scraped clean, unmarred by that bucket (imagine the damage an amateur could have done!), exposed for inspection and …. drum roll ….. do … we … need … repair?

You tell me. This is from the one side.

And this is from the other.

That’s plywood! Been there 45 years! And it is in very good shape! I was thinking that when the house was constructed, some (probably most) of the people on the job site were saying This is stupid. Who puts plywood in the ground? But I bet there was at least one who said It’ll be all right. This’ll work. It worked!

As you may recall, my interior wall begged to differ. It showed bowing, indicating excessive pressure and possibly serious structural damage.

This is because of what Joe did not find at basement floor level when he dug out the dirt. There was no gravel or drainpipe. When water flowed downhill (as water will do!) – and my land slopes toward the house – and soaked the earth that pressed against that plywood, it was very heavy! It pushed the plywood in, pushed the 2×6’s that stand between the exterior plywood and the interior drywall, and cracked the drywall. But moisture apparently did not penetrate the one sheet of plastic that they had put between the plywood and the dirt (which of course Joe’s machine shredded when he dug out the dirt). As soon as he removed the dirt and the pressure, that wall straightened right out.

Thus the wall is in such good shape! No repair necessary on the outside. Just need to waterproof it and add a way for water to escape in the future. On the inside we’ll add some 2×6’s for extra support and replace the drywall.

I used a wire brush to get as much of the dirt as possible off the exterior surface.

With a heat gun I did the best I could to dry the surface where, along the bottom especially, it was still damp from the dirt that had been sticking on it overnight. Then Samuel and I got into our paint suits and rolled liquid asphalt on the wall.

Onto that we pressed a solid sheet of 6ml plastic. Or maybe he pressed and I watched?

The 6” perforated pipe came next, followed by gravel. There’s a big black snake under my house!

Samuel drove Tracy’s tractor to bring gravel to where Joe could pick it up and unload it into the hole.

Sandy raked and shoveled gravel so that it sat where it should on top of the pipe.

And then got out of the way for Joe to add more gravel.

On top of the gravel we put a piece of landscape fabric (so that dirt doesn’t seep through the gravel and get into the perforations of the pipe), and then those big piles of dirt in the front yard disappeared.

The front yard still needs a final grading, and it’s a mess to walk across for now.

But as the old Alka Seltzer commercials used to say: Oh, what a relief it is! I don’t have to worry about this foundation any more! When it rains, when water gets into the earth, it will seep down (as water will do!). When it gets to the landscape fabric, it will go through it. When it gets to the gravel, it will go through it. When it gets to the perforated pipe, it will go into it through the perforations, and then this water will flow away from the house, out into woods along the side of the house, to where the end of the pipe exits the ground.

Easily, I’d say, there’s more than 45 more years left for this plywood foundation!