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:

Grrr, its time to quit working

Today marked yet another day on the site, and made me really sad that I don't get to see all the goings-on.  And, maybe a little bit jealous of Joern, who works 20 feet away from the site.
When I dropped Joern off at his parents' this morning, the excavator operator was busy smoothing down the ballast stones for the crane to sit atop.  Since our ground is kind of uneven anyway, plus the crane is so heavy, it needs extra support, ballast stones were placed underneath the crane (they also will be underneath our house.) 
During the day, the crane that was standing near our friend's new duplex construction, was dismantled and set up right next to our building lot!

Crane as it stood for months in front of our friend's new construction

 The crane being moved to us!

It seems hard to tell, but the crane is now at our lot!

After the crane was settled, which took quite a while, the workers returned to digging out the site.  Some fabric was laid down on top of the areas of the ground that did not need to be further dug out. 

The fabric is a special fabric that helps with the drainage system of the house.

After the fabric was laid, the digging recommenced.  First, two trenches were dug, along the east side of the house and along the north side.  These are the trenches for the footers.  One trench was even filled with concrete already.  These footers evenly dispirse the weight of the house, and needed to be especially deep to counter the force of the hill pushing against them.  The second footer trench will be filled tomorrow.

The trenches were also dug for the waste water pipes, electircity, and the pipes for the water supply.  The trenches are not finished, but here is how we left the site tonight:

The plans

I realized that since my last post with plans, we've made quite a few changes.  Once we started with the blueprints, part of the problem became that they are too large to scan.  We don't have a PDF or anything, so all we've been holding onto were giant pieces of paper.  Plus, we kept making changes.  The plans are now mostly finalized, but I am still not happy with the master bath.

Last week, Joern and I bit the bullet, and bought a new camera, a Cannon EOS 1000D.  It is considered the "beginners level" DSLR camera.  We really love it.  Since we have such a fab new camera, I thought it would be a good test to photograph the plans so we can have our own digital set.  I'm pretty sure I could have done a lot better, but I'm learning. 

So, here you go, the 99% finalized plans. 

This is the cross section.  UG= cellar, EG= first floor, OG= second floor, Bühne = attic.

The stairs to the first floor start in the back of the cellar and come up in the living/dining area.

The stairs to the second floor begin near our back door and go up to the landing across from the children's bath.

The view from the north.  This is the back of our house.

I appologize for this east side being so crazy.  No matter how I try to upload it, dear Blogger keeps uploading it in this direction.  If you turn your computer (best done if on a laptop) you can see the add-on now runs from the kitchen to the edge of the dining room.  That long window is above our kitchen sink.

This is the south-facing side, the street view.  The mini window in the middle is the children's bathroom.

                                        The cellar.  Joern's garage is the large one on the left, and enters into our media
                              room.  My garage has been cut-off, but enters into the foyer.  The big room is the
                              media room.  On the right side will be Joern's fitness room.  We had to combine
                              the bathroom and the mechanical room, because workers needed more room than
                              we had planned in the mechanical room.  Those two rectangles coming off the
                              right side of the house are light vents (Lichschächte) which will allow natural light
                              into the two rooms. 

First floor.  You can see the living room has couches in it, and the dining room has

a table and chairs :)  The fireplace will go in the middle of these two rooms along the wall. 

The kitchen connects to the dining room.  Behind the kitchen is the pantry, where we now have

a utility sink, back door is in the middle of the house, and the powder room is to the left of the staircase.

The guest bedroom (or the office) is off the living room. 

The second floor.  The stairs come out onto a small hallway.  In front of the stairs is the children's bath.

The bathroom has been reworked many times, but now fits both a shower stall and the washer and dryer.

To the right of the bathroom is one bedroom. It is small, but full of light (which will make storage

a challenge in the future.)  The second bedroom is in the rear corner of the house, Joern is considering

making this his office for right now.  To the left of the children's bath is the master suite. 
Mr. B redesigned our bedroom to increase space, and the square in the corner is the chimney.

Our walk-in was made a little smaller, but I think we'll be okay.  Our master bath was a bit of a challenge

too.  We're going to get a normal shaped bathtub.  Joern is sad because he had to give up his

bidet.

Well, there you have it.   The official blueprints for our house.  These prints are locked inside that blue box

on our building lot. 

And, it's a wrap!

Literally.  Day 6 of excavation complete, and the end of the day brought the end of the excavation phase!  We're done.  The ground was smoothed out, all piles of dirt were removed.  The garages and foyer are very clearly lower than the house now.  The corners of the house were marked out with wood, and the walls for my garage were also marked out.  The sides of the hole were also covered with a plastic covering, to help prevent a dangerous situation from arising in case of a mudslide. 

Joern in his garage

Northeast corner of houe.  Standing in the future mechanical room.

The pink lines (pretty hard to make out) mark the placement for the pipes.

My garage.

That box behind the excavator contains the plans for the lot and the house.


And now for the facts.  Excavation took 6 days, 7:00 am to 5 pm daily. 
1,200 cubic meters (42,000 cubic feet) dirt removed by 80 double-trailered trucks.
Sadly, the dirt was brought all over the country, so we won't  be able to visit our dirt.

On Monday, they will begin digging for the pipes that will lay under the house.  I am so shocked and impressed that this giganitc excavation was completed so quickly!  Thank you Mr. Wolfram!!!

Excavation, Day 5

Thursday, or Day 5 on the timeline, was quite an exciting day in our excavation experience.
The walls were made quite smooth and a lot of dirt was removed.  The result was a transformation from a hole in my in-laws' front yard to a very clear area perfect for a house.

The walls were smoothed down.

Day 4 rear corner of Joern's garage                            Day 5, rear corner of Joern's garage

And most excitingly, the entrance to the driveway was brought down to the level of the street!  Meaning, once the excavator moves, we could drive into our driveway!

Photos from day 2 (left) and day 5 (right).  The entrance to the driveway remained 3 feet above the street from day 2 to the afternoon of day 5.

Mr. Wolfram (the operator of the excavator,) and another driver also measured out the ground ensuring that it was level. 

As they checked, they marked areas that needed a little extra dirt, or digging, to ensure that the entire building lot was indeed level.

In other news, Mr. B also stopped by today, wearing his two hats, architect and project manager.  He dropped off the official, completed plans.  Mr. B also called the plumber, Mr. Haag, to meet with Joern at the building lot. Sadly, I wasn't there to meet with Mr. B and Mr. Haag, but Joern was. They discussed the placement of the pipes underneath the house, which were to be marked out the next day. They decided against solar panels, because the air pump is very efficient, and because we have a special situation with solar panels and our low-pitched roof. Also because when we would need the solar panels to help support the warm water (in the snowy,cold winter,) the solar panels are often covered with snow, or there is not enough sunlight to support the solar panels. Joern also gave Mr. Haag the plans from Joern's cousin, the structural engineer.  It turns out that the air pump Mr. Haag had planned will be at its limits for our house size.  So now, its back to the drawing board, Mr. Haag will offer a few options to make up for this problem.  They also decided that we will indeed tie the fireplace into the hot water system, this way, we will use the fireplace to help support the production of hot water on chilly winter days.  This does mean that will have to be a little more serious in our search for a fireplace, but that doesn't really bother me at all.

Excavation Day 4

Today is September 1.  It seems hard to belive that a month ago, the building lot, and my in-law's front yard looked like this:

And less than one week ago, the building lot looked like this:

Today, the building lot looks like this: