Excavation

The excavation contractor is making good time with the great weather we've had recently. They are done with the bulk of the excavation for the building foundation, and should be ready to do fine-grading by tomorrow afternoon. The surveyor is scheduled to come out on Wednesday morning to stake the corners of the septic tank for excavation and check elevations, then the geotechnical engineer will take some samples to provide final foundation design recommendations.

Following are some photos from my site visit today:

(large rocks I asked to be saved for landscaping in the foreground)

(looking north, towards the fill from the future street)

I'd estimate those guys have hauled off about 1,500-2,000 cubic meters of fill already, and they probably have another 1,000 to go before they're all done. The cost for that work will probably run around 57,000 NIS (New Israeli Shekels), or about $15,800. The initial estimate was for 10-12 days of work, but I think they'll be done in closer to 8 days, since they haven't encountered much rock.

Today, we had to ask the geotechnical engineer to make a quick trip to the site to evaluate the stability of the fill material from the street that is encroaching on our property. The final elevation for the 1st basement level gardens falls on top of 1-3 meters of fill, and the decision was made to remove all that excess fill and go down to natural grade. This will increase the excavation quantities from the initial estimate, and probably result in taller retaining walls along the street, but will hopefully be less expensive than having to deal with excavating for wall foundations after the big backhoe is offsite, and create for a more stable design environment for the retaining wall.

I was again reminded of the differences in the way people do business here, since (a) I called the geotech firm owner, he was in Barcelona but answered his phone and gave me the name and number of another engineer in his office, who made the time (and took a taxi) to come to the site on a 1-hour notice, (b) he and I walked around and under the backhoe while it was working, asked the guy to dig in a certain spot in front of us to confirm his assessment of the natural ground elevation, and (c) I called the surveyor and made arrangement to have them come out to the site on a day's notice and they are both willing and able to do so.

I feel like I've been fortunate in my dealings with contractors and designers so far, and everyone has been accommodating and responsive. I keep getting the feeling that it's still a small town and people will do what they can to help you. We had a similar experience on a personal level when we first arrived and had the need to call a doctor a 7pm on our second or third night in town. Not only did he answer his cell phone, he stopped by our house 20 minutes later for a house call and we paid him directly. I think if I can stay ahead of the curve a little bit, I can keep this project moving forward pretty smoothly ... I just wish I knew more about what to expect and how a typical project of this type progresses, but I guess that's why they call it gaining experience. 

Groundbreaking

We broke ground on our new residential condominium project yesterday, after obtaining the excavation permits from the municipality and a handshake agreement with the excavation contractor to agree on a price for hauling fill material offsite (per cubic meter).  Here are a couple of architectural renderings prepared by Amara Architects:

(front view, looking south)

(rear view, looking north)

Building anything on the steep (15%-35% slope) Ramallah grades is challenging, and the solution for new roads has most commonly been to (a) have roads well in excess of 15% slopes, and (b) dump a bunch of fill onto downhill properties, sadly ignoring existing trees and paying no attention to stabilizing soils for water quality purposes (though there is an attempt to provide structural stability, albeit in a rudimentary fashion). You can see a little bit of what I'm talking about in the lower left-hand side of the first two photos below, where some contractor (hopefully directed by the municipality) dumped material there for the future road and encroached by 6 or 7 meters onto our property, as well as in the fifth photo below showing the future road into our project area. I'll post some more extreme examples at a later date.

As anticipated, I'm trying to quickly un-learn the US customary system of measurement I'd grown accustomed to in my past 11 years of land development work in the US and adjust to the metric system in all aspects of life, not just my work. Daily forecasts and your oven temperature are given in degrees Celsius,  gasoline for your car in Liters, and your car odometer reading in kilometers per hour. Even the laundry detergent instructions tell you how many milliliters of the liquid soap to use! This, in addition to figuring out the translation of all technical terms I need to use on a daily basis for work, has kept me on my toes from day one.

Below are the 5 panoramic photos we submitted to the municipality attached to our excavation permit (to keep the neighboring properties condition on file, avoid conflicts during or after construction), looking south-east from the future road / entrance to our project, and turning south-west:

(survey crew and excavation contractor in the corner)

(future views from the balconies of east units)

(future views from the balconies of west units)

(future road leading to site)

These are a few, more scenic, photos of the site wildflowers and my son picking poppies as he accompanies me to the groundbreaking site meeting. Although the contractor offered him a chance to climb on the big excavator before it was running, he (surprisingly) refused this time around. With no hard hats in sight, and the possibility of a 3-year old climbing on a piece of heavy machinery, you could say people do things a little differently in this part of the world.