The house next door...or how to NOT build a house

[jdurand]

This is an ongoing construction project.

In theory they are building a McMansion next to our house. The first thing was they had to cut down our giant redwood tree because the roots would be in the way of their basement. It turns out that is the least of their problems...

The plan called for 28 drilled and cast piles around the perimeter to prevent the sides of the pit from slumping. Only thing is, they never did a soil test or asked anyone around here if this was feasible...this is an old creek bed and there are a LOT of rocks in the ground. They never got the first hole below about 6 feet.

Plan B, just start digging and see what happens.



200 truck loads of dirt later they have a hole 14 feet deep on the street side and about 20 feet on the hill side. We're also starting to notice the hole is only a couple of feet from our fence, the roots from our former redwood tree are the only thing holding the UNDERCUT wall up.



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