THE PLUMBERS!!!!

I received a huge surprise during my daily morning break phone call to Joern.  When I called him, he was in the middle of walking through the house with the PLUMBERS!  Yup, they started today!
They first walked around the house, marking the location of all of our plumbing fixtures.  Then, they got to work!  Today included some wastewater pipes, a locking door for tools and equipment,  and most importantly the distribution manifold (yeah, I can get technical too,) for the radiant heating!
I decided instead of photos today, that I would instead do a video walkthrough of the house.  I stole the idea from another blog I follow, Bower Power, not that I think I have reached the blogging status of Katie Bower, but it did seem like a pretty smart idea.  The only problem is though that the video is on my iPhone and I can't seem to find the USB cable.  Bleh, technology!
So, dear readers, you can look forward to a video walkthrough of the home, with the plumbing updates, within the next few days.
For now, ciao from our slowly coming together home!

It seems hard to belive

Two weeks ago today, this is what our building lot looked like:

Here's the same view from today:

Today's status:
Excavation is complete, 6 days ago.  The footers have mostly all been filled, with the exception of the trench running along the north side of the house.  The drainage pipes that will run underneath the house are laid, and covered by ballast stones.  Today, the water connection was attached, and now is that black pipe with the blue pipe sticking out of it.  The electricty was also brought up to the house, and comes out of a pipe next to those wood boards.  The waste water pipes have also been laid, and too are mostly covered by ballast stones.  The majority of the building lot is now covered with a material that acts as a barrier to help keep the ballast stones in place.  This is the white material you can see in the above picture.  Digging began  today for the underground cistern that will be under the driveway.
Over the course of this week, the building site has gone from a big hole in the ground to  a very clear and definite building site!

Our first accident

We're fine.  No one got hurt.  But, the truck that delivered the metal for our cellar walls had a pretty big problem:

That's part of the fuel pump that got jammed into the fuel tank.  Ugh!  The poor truck driver.  Since our street is not yet finished, there is a relatively large incline between the sidewalk and our road.  When the truck driver drove over the this incline, the heavy trailer filled with iron pressed down on the filter, broke it, and pushed it through the fuel tank.

Again, poor truck driver.  When I got home, this was the scene:

Of course, what I found out when I talked to Joern was that this scene remained unchanged for 6 hours today!  We walked down to talk to the truck driver.  He was so nice.  I guess after the incident, he contacted his boss, who contacted the mechanics they work with.  It took the mechanics 4 hours to get to Neckartailfingen, and another 2 hours to put a band-aid  on it, so that the driver could drive home.  The truck driver explained that he will never forget our construction, and will respectfully decline returning to our construction site for further deliveries.  He will recommend that a smaller truck complete further deliveries.  I feel really bad for this poor guy.

In other more successful news, the footers poured in the back and the front.  According to Joern, the trench for the footer in front of our house was deeper than I am tall.  Woah!

The builders also laid out some of the waste water piping: