One of those good news/bad news things... They are making great progress on the house demolition. The walls are all down and the steel beams and railroad ties to hold the house up are in place. The bad news is that the lot on Scotch Bonnet is a mess. First, the pics of the house, sorta chronologically.
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| Walls are down and the railroad ties and steel beams are being put in place. |
Now the pics of the Lot on Scotch Bonnet - the bad news. The Building Inspector determined that we have bad soil and we are basically in a hole. There is a culvert that runs under the road that belongs to the Town. It is allowing the tide to come up and into the yard. Because the soil is bad it is holding the water so we are in a perpetual bog. Jerry (the contractor) took the issue to a structural engineer and a soils engineer today. The concern is that the pilings wouldn't be able to hold the house without shifting. It sounds like concrete footings that run between the piles will solve it but the engineer will have to sign off on it. Drainage is also an issue and lot height is an issue. Besides the footings, two french drains, a culvert, retaining wall on the south side, possibly other sides, I'm not sure what else we can do to solve the problem. In addition, we found out that the latest survey puts the road height at about 5'. We can bring in dirt to raise the lot to 6'. Since we are currently in a VE17 zone, that puts the house at 11' to the lowest member or about 12.5' - 13' for the finished floor. We really wanted about 9'. However, after my visit with the inspector today he will let us not add the foot of freeboard that was required, and two feet are now required. We are slipping between the statute that expired last month and the new one for Holden Beach that went into effect last month. Tom has been designing the stairs and it looks like the whole front yard will be stairs or maybe we'll just put in an elevator.
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| There is so much mud they are shoveling the street. |
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| Looking east from the North West corner of the lot. Looks pretty good from this angle, other than the neighbor's utilities are installed on our lot. |
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| You can see the silt fence and pipe for the french drains. If you look closely, you can see the backhoe is now buried to its axles. These photos were taken a few days ago. When I went by today it is still stuck there. |
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| A better shot of the backhoe. Or it would be if I could figure out how to flip the pic. |
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| There was a berm near the road that was leveled out, basically where the backhoe is. Notice the standing water in the center of lot (foreground). |
