Went to check the house progress! Footers are poured and the water line is run up to the house and to the frost free faucet. The faucet will be used for construction water since the water meter is a good 1100 ft down the hill. When construction is done I can use it for the garden later!
Next we wait on a surveyor to pin the foundation prior to block laying. The weather has been dry and amazing which has been great for getting all this done!
Frost Free Spigot
Frost free spigots release all the water in the tube once the water is shut off so that the water doesn’t freeze in the pipe. It’s a necessity on a spigot like this otherwise in the winter it would need to be covered and insulated. We met with our builder and arranged the location of the spigot so it would be near where we would eventually put the garden.
Havin a convenient water source is essential to gardening here in Tennessee. Often we end up with dry periods in the summer where the only water you get on the garden is what you bring to it. This year we had several weeks in July with barely any rainfall.
Pouring the Concrete Footers
The footers were dug the other day. If you notice in the images below there are some areas that had to be stair stepped with pieces of lumber to create an edge in the concrete. The stair stepping had to happen due to the slop of the lot. We’re roughly 6 feet lower in elevation from the back right corner of the house to the front left corner.
Also present in the picture is a green tube. That tube will eventually house the septic line which will take all the waste from the drain lines to the septic tank then eventually to the field lines. Our property was rated for a 4 bedroom house based on the soils on the lot. I’ll save the septic information for a separate post but if you are building on acreage it is important to find some good soils sites first.
The concrete will harden over the next several days. Once the concrete has hardened enough it will be ready for the block masons to come out and set the foundation block!