Garage Foundation Watering

How to build a garage:

1. Clear land
2. Set foundation forms
3. Pour foundation
4. Water foundation until garage grows

Day two, and nothing has grown yet.

Beth watering our garage foundation

Or something like that. We've been spraying water on our foundation twice a day since it was poured, to try to slow down the curing process and increase its final strength. Our garage should be delivered from Mueller sometime next week!

After about seven days of curing, it should be cured enough to start erecting our garage.

Checking on the Garage Slab

Just a quick note today. We stopped by today to water the surface a bit and to take a look. Felipe was supposed to remove the forms today and start forming our house foundation, but it's been delayed till tomorrow morning.

We brought two 5-gallon buckets of water, and that wasn't enough for the 24' x 30' slab. We refilled a bit nearby and added some more before heading home.

Beth also decided to do a little yoga while we were there. :) The half facing North Mountain of Hueco Tanks will be the yoga room, and the back half will be the climbing/training and workshop.

Tree Pose in the future yoga room!

 The yoga side will have french doors and windows on both sides, making it essentially a 16' wide by 8' high window facing North Mountain. Quite the view for a yoga class, eh?

Down Dog in the future yoga room!

Pouring the Garage Foundation

Today we placed the anchor bolt templates and then poured the concrete.

Anchor bolts in their template, affixed to the concrete form.

We had a bit of trouble though; the forms were about 1/2" too long on the long side of the foundation, which would put the anchor bolts in the wrong place. If you look closely at the form below, you can see the shims we had to add.

More anchor bolt templates

 Once we finally had all of the anchor bolt templates in place, Felipe called the concrete company for delivery. The first truck brought 10 (cubic) yards.

Felipe pouring the concrete, with North Mountain, Huceo Tanks, in the background.

The concrete has been spread but not screeded yet.

We had a much later start than planned, with the truck not arriving until nearly 2:00 instead of 11:00 because of the form error. Luckily though, the clouds moved in which made it a lot cooler, helping to slow down the drying of the concrete.

After screeding and smoothing out the concrete.

Some more smoothing needs to be done

 This was definitely not something I could have done alone. I would be comfortable with MAYBE a 10' x 10' pad if I had help, since I could screed from outside the forms. I know I couldn't get the concrete as smooth as they did though!

Almost completely done!

They completed finishing the concrete tonight, and tomorrow they're coming back to remove the forms and start assembling the forms for the house!

Here's a time lapse of today's events!

Digging the Garage Footings

Today was a pretty difficult day of digging. Yesterday, Felipe Torres and his crew laid out the foundation forms using 2x6 boards.

These metal buildings need a 1.5" x 1.5" lip in the top edge of the slab to allow the wall sheets to sit slightly below the interior floor, so that's the extra piece of wood you can see on the inside of the forms.

We dug 16" deep, 12" wide. Luckily it rained the previous couple of days so the dirt was relatively soft. Here's my side. I think I kicked some butt today.

My digging progress

Chris had a pickaxe that he used to break up the other side. I just used my pointed digging shovel, which was definitely a bit harder. I left my trenches about an inch shallow and an inch narrow so they could finish them with nice square edges.

This is about as far as I could get before hitting drier, more packed dirt.

 And here is the finished dig.

Digging is done! I did the whole right side (30'). North Mountain, Hueco Tanks, in the background.

Digging is hard work. I moved about 1.5 cubic yards, over 2 tons of dirt!

Finally, Felipe showed up and they laid out the rebar in the footings and the mesh across the slab.

Footings with rebar and mesh

Tomorrow we'll place the anchor bolts (using templates) and then pour the concrete!

Finishing the Pad Sites

Our land has really been transformed over the last few weeks. Mario put in a ton of work moving existing dirt around and processing the incoming dirt for under our slabs.

Looking at the house foundation area

The amazing thing is that some of these areas have been raised over 2' for the finished grade!

Moving around some extra dirt

Another view of the house foundation with West Mountain, Hueco Tanks, in the background

 And here's the finished product! Everything looks great, The only other real earthwork to do is install the septic. We also need to spread screening around to keep our dirt from blowing away. In total, we had to haul in 45 truck loads (instead of 30) and used nine water trucks. A bit more than we expected, but Beth really wanted a nice extension of the level ground for a porch around the house. The side facing North Mountain has about 6' of flat ground before sloping down to existing grade.

One more view of the two slab locations. My car is parked in the garage, the house pad will be on the left. North and West Mountains, Hueco Tanks, in the background.

Next up: Start the foundation prep work for concrete! Need to put in forms, then dig the footings, lay the rebar, and finally pour the concrete. Felipe Torres will be helping with that part.

Pad Sites Almost Done

We're planning on bringing in 30 dump trucks of dirt, each carrying roughly 12 tons. For this dirt, one cubic yard is about 1.5 ton, so this is a decent amount of dirt. We're building up both pads to 1' above current grade (bringing them to an elevation of about 4448').

Most of these photos are from yesterday.

Dumping some dirt! North Mountain of Hueco Tanks is in the background on the left.

Spraying water as part of the dirt processing process. West Mountain in the background.

More dirt!

It will take a total of three days to haul all of the dirt out here. I really wish we didn't have to do that, but our existing dirt is really bad. I don't know the technical description, but when it gets wet it just turns into a sloppy messy mud. This new dirt will provide a much more stable base for our foundations.

Mario processing the dirt while a water truck sprays more water.

Ponding Done, Ready for Inspection?

Now that our ponding is done, we should be ready for an inspection so that we can get our Certificate of Plat Compliance, right?

Wrong.

I mean, I talked with Sal Alonzo, engineer at Roads and Bridges that approved our grading plans, and he assured me THREE TIMES that all that would be inspected was the ponding area. So what could be wrong?

We had an inspector come out, Fabian, and he was concerned about a few things:

1. Slight issue with drainage toward pond (needed slightly larger slope)
2. No elevation marker in the pond
3. No driveway layout (we need a paved driveway?!)

Mario fixed issue (1) by about the time Fabian left. Also, as he was leaving, Fabian called Sal Alonzo and asked about issue (2). Luckily, we don't need to add an elevation marker (6" diameter PVC, 3' long, buried completely in the bottom of our pond and then filled with concrete). Issue (3) is still an ongoing problem.

Apparently, the county wants us to pave the first 10' of our driveway, coming from Old Butterfield toward our land. The thing that makes me mad is that this is their property. There is a Right Of Way of 60' between our land and the road. There is also an oil pipeline buried under this ROW, about 12' off of the road.

I have now spoken to Gilbert Saldaña, senior engineer at the county Roads and Bridges, about this matter multiple times. First, on the phone yesterday, and then again in person today. Here's what he said yesterday:

• Normally the entire drive must be paved from Edge Of Pavement to my Property Line. But since EOP to PL is 60', they're being nice and only making us pave 10'.
• Paving is to protect their road from our gravel driveway.
• It doesn't matter that no one else within a 10 mile radius of Hueco Tanks has a paved driveway entry, we have to do it just because.

Again, the problem is that we can't get utilities (electric) until we have this cert, and we can't pave our driveway without electricity. Again, nice circular logic. We also can't get onto our property via our driveway during this inspection process, since we have to lay out the driveway formwork and reinforcement and get that inspected prior to pouring the concrete. So we have to make a NEW driveway to keep working...

I kept fighting back, saying it is ridiculous that I have to pave their property and that no one else has done this in our area, but that didn't really change Gilbert's mind much. What I did finally find out was that we can get a temporary cert to get electric and septic installed. Why they never told me this before, I have no idea.

So today I drove in to Roads and Bridges, which inexplicably is downtown, even though their jurisdiction is outside the city limits. I asked for our temporary cert, and Louis Rodriguez started working on it. I also asked to speak to Gilbert. Eventually, Louis gave me two pieces of paper, one was a letter to El Paso Electric stating they should give us electric service due to a previous lawsuit between Hueco Mountain Estates and the State of Texas, the other being a sheet granting us the ability to get a septic permit. Neither document was a temporary certificate of plat compliance.

Gilbert eventually came out to talk with me, and I found out a few new things:

1. We can NEVER get a certificate of plat compliance because we won't have city water
2. All of these inspections and grading are so that we are compliant with our flood plain development permit
3. He will consider my arguments against paving our driveway, as I showed him photos of their own gravel roads entering directly onto the paved roads without a 10' buffer zone.

Tackling issue (1). WHAT?! I spoke to Louis Rodriguez on more than one occasion and he said we HAD to do this grading plan to get a cert. But we can't ever get a cert. Apparently there was a legal battle a few decades ago between the Hueco Mountain Estates and the State of Texas. Texas lost, meaning the state had to allow land owners here the ability to connect to utilities (among other things) without a certificate of plat compliance. Our realtor John Mills says that Louis was around when the lawsuits actually happened. So how does he not know we never could get a cert? I even specifically asked him about that point, three months ago, as to whether we really had to have a cert to get electric and he said yes. Way to drop the ball on that one...

Now issue (2). This all begs the question, did we ever actually have to hire an engineer for a grading plan, and dig a pond, and go through all this BS? I don't know yet, because I'm still trying to be nice while Gilbert decides whether we really have to pave our driveway. But my understanding now is that no, we didn't need to do any of this. We should have been able to get this letter for the electric company, and this other document for our septic, without any ponding. I assume this because technically our ponding didn't pass inspection, yet we still got these documents. So we are now out about $7,000 and over three months behind, likely just because the county can't get its shit together long enough to remember that they were almost sued a couple decades ago for essentially this same stuff.

What did I learn? County officials don't know what they are doing. I still have yet to be given the legal standing they have to force us to pave our driveway or even require this ponding. There is nothing on their website about driveways, and I finally got a paper copy of an archaic driveway permit form which assumes your road has curbs and drainage. Which ours doesn't.

::End Of Rant::