The architect is done, the city planning department has given us the go ahead, and we are in plan check at the city building department. So, we are on our way to building a recording studio!
After carefully reviewing the plans we discovered that if we were to put the foundation on top of the existing grade, the foundation and all of its layers would add 10 inches in height, up from the existing grade. The problem with that is that we have just 5 feet from the structure to transition in to the alley grade. And since we don’t want to be scraping the undercarriage of our vehicles, we determined that we needed to remove at least six inches of the existing grade.
Easier said, than done! First of all we rented a 24HPtractor (/loader/scraper/digger) for about $900.00 a week and a trailer with an auto dump feature. So far we have hauled off fourteen loads of clean dirt to the local asphalt plant. And a week later we are still not done.
During the dig we found all sorts of things; a washing machine, dryer, freezer, a four burner range, a crank shaft and other assorted parts of a car. We also hit a minor water line (for a sprinkler system) that we didn’t know was there. And unbeknownst to us there was some sort of concrete landing, about 3ft x 3ft about six inches under the dirt. All of this stuff had to come out of the ground, and then hauled to the dump.
So we are well on our way to building a recording studio. The next step is to have the concrete people come in and frame in the foundation and pad. Hopefully the permit will be through plan check and we can get an inspection and have the concrete poured in a timely manner.
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