Excavating the footings (again)

The video

This video could have been about a lot of things…  It could be about appropriate ways to get you kids involved in construction…  Or about how I tried to hire for this basic task so I could focus on the trickier parts of constructing my earth sheltered home…

But in the end, the worked needed to get done, so I got my 10 year old to start on it one afternoon after work/school. David is a pretty good worker, but I didn’t mind him taking breaks (lots of breaks) with the bee bee gun.  On another cool spring day, I went out there with my younger son.  Generally speaking, they are very different personalities (Michael is also younger and therefore less suited to digging or working independently), but I was still pretty proud of how well Michael worked.  He also enjoys the bb gun, but he actually spent most of the evening with me working on the rib forms (a separate video). On each of these evenings, we took a break to go walking (and shooting) in the woods.

That Saturday, the whole family came out.  While I was working on welding steel arches (another video entirely), the rest of them got to digging.  My wife, Sherri, did the majority of the excavation until the bedroom footings were completely uncovered.

I took the following Monday afternoon off work and came back out.  This time, I managed to hire some students to excavate while a friend helped me with welding.  These two teens were scratching their heads as they uncovered my footings like archaeologists with no idea of what layout to expect.

Side note here…  I had some trouble with my generator (mentioned in another video) we ended up taking the carburetor apart, etc.  It turned out the carb was fine.  The oil level was just a tiny bit low and the “low oil” sensor was “almost” shutting things down as the oil was drawn up into the engine.

It took the teens several hours to clear the footings.  My wife thought that was money well spent.  Next I had them switch to clearing all the bracing wood out of the basement.  We ended up moving it away with the skid steer.  I offered them a 3^rd job, but they were pooped and decided to go home instead.

Now that the wood is out of the basement, we can try to get these teens back to help clear the concrete slag out of there.