Working on the new house

One of the issues with our new place in Pleasanton is that the soil is terrible.  By "soil" I really mean "clay."  My dad said it was some of the worst he had ever seen.  We knew about it before we bought the house, and it's just something you have to learn to deal with in Pleasanton. Most of the houses in the area are built on piers as a result, so that you can adjust the level of the house when it inevitably starts to "settle" (ie "sink") in various places.  During the inspection of our house we were told that there was moisture under the house, and that we should probably install a drainage system to help keep it dry.  We were quoted over $10k (which the seller would not cover), so we decided it would be worth doing at least some of it ourselves, with the help of some handy day-laborers from Home Depot.

So Boris and my dad started working on a design and plan for the drainage system.  A week later, they had done test digs and at least had a preliminary plan in place, which was now much bigger than before (and involved paving over a significant portion of the dirt in the backyard so that no water can get under the house.  Bigger = more expensive!

The first part of the plan was to rip out part of the driveway and add a drainage pipe so that the water coming off the side of the house could go down the pipe into the street, rather than pooling up near the house and eventually dripping down the sidewalk like it was before.  Boris developed some new and very impressive skills as a manual laborer.  Here are some photos of the final stages of their work - the final concrete pour!