Sunday, March 20, 2011

Hitting Rock Bottom

The excavation contractor reached bedrock a few of days ago, and their work slowed down considerably. In addition, we decided to increase the excavation limits to allow for the pouring of a retaining wall foundation at the northern (street) boundary. As such, their completion was pushed back to Thursday afternoon, so it took them a week total.

Below are site photos from the past couple of days:

(hammering through bedrock)

 (a lot of fill material to haul off)

 (cleaning up the site)

 (final grades)

And here's one showing the official method (from my new collection called "Not Sanctioned by OSHA") for repairing a leaking oil pipe on your excavator:

(also seen under "why women live longer than men")

The surveyors came out today and did their elevation check in order to give us final quantities of haul material, which will be the basis for final payment of the excavation contractor. We also had the geotechnical engineer make their visit to take the soil samples, and below are some photos of the highly technical specimen collection methods:

 (drill getting ready to go down 11 meters)

 (dirt collected on corrugated metal sheet, dumped into ziplock bag)

(one of 3 bore holes, depths of 8, 8 and 11 meters. preliminary indications are all rock)

(the geotech showing me the strength of a soil/rock sample. everything's very hand's on)

Next we move on to securing temporary water and electricity for the site, buying a mobile site office / shipping container, and negotiating for prices with materials suppliers (rock, concrete and steel) and sub-contractors (electricians, plumbers ... etc.).

Getting a lock on the price of the materials will be critical to establishing our cost basis, and since the materials prices are climbing and the dollar is falling against the Shekel, it's impossible to determine the final price for each unit. We think they will sell for somewhere in the $180k-$190k range for approximately 190 square meters (roughly 2,050 square feet).

More on all of this to come in the weeks and months ahead.

1 comment:

Charles said...

Hi Faris! Wow, looks like quite a project. I will look forward to following your progress on the blog. Keep the good pictures coming.

- Charles Kiley