March 14, 2005 A Bigger Foundation?

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I'm trying to keep my blog entries more updated during our permitting process. Before we started permitting, I was cloudy about how this process worked. Perhaps more frequent updates will be more enlightening than a compilation-type entry. Actually, I'm still a bit cloudy about how permitting works.

While I was calling around to solicit more bids for the foundation, I received a phone call from the grading & drainage engineer that our corrections were ready for pick-up. After trying to determine exactly what the comments meant, we realized that we were out of our league and we'll need to send them to the geologist first thing tomorrow, but from what we can tell, it looks as though our footing depths may not be deep enough. The depth of our footings as recommended in our scour report is 6' and it looks as though the county may be requesting 8' deep footings.

This is not the best news since our foundation looks as though it is twice what we budgeted. We haven't enough money in our budget to cover the cost difference. I don't know how the required changes will translate in cost yet, if we'll have to pay for more engineering or a larger foundation, or both. Anyway, we're crossing our fingers. We'll know more tomorrow and our contractor thinks that the first bid was on the high side anyway.