Equipment on the Lot

I won't call this a ground breaking exactly. Yes, a shovel (on the arm of a track hoe) dug in but it was to locate the sewer line so that we would know how deep the basement could be. Also, to verify whether there were laterals from the sewer line in the street.

The City Public Works department said they thought there was a connection from an earlier house on the lot so we were hopeful.

Long story short, we scraped and scraped and found no connection (did they use an outhouse or septic tank?) and no evidence of digging; the strata of soil types seemed to be undisturbed.

That meant having to open the pavement of the street to add our own new connection. We have to cold patch the asphalt now and resurface with hot asphalt in the spring.

First bad news: The sewer line in the street was only 5 feet deep, That meant the south house (ours) had to have a sewage ejector pump for lines in the basement.
Second bad news: The sewer line in the street was only 6 inches in diameter. Our builder hoped that we would have 6 inch pipes coming from the houses but the City won't allow 6 inch pipes to feed into 6 inch pipes (understandable). Therefore we'll have to do with 4 inch pipes from the houses and that means we must have a steeper incline for gravity feed.

Results: Jeff decided to put sewage ejectors in the basements of both houses. That allowed him to go deep with the basement, improving the looks of the exterior and lowering the cost of building.