Yesterday and today they back filled the dirt around the foundation and filled the basement with gravel. Before they put the gravel in the basement, they put the drain pipe around the inside.
You can see the pipe goes all around the basement near the wall. They put gravel down on the drain pipe, and then covered the gravel with filter cloth.
The filter cloth keeps the dirt out of the holes in the drain pipe.
The gravel was dumped into the basement with the back hoe.
Then they raked the gravel smooth over the whole basement floor.
Look at this. This is cute.
The back hoe driver grabbed a railroad tie and used it to smooth out the fill around the foundation.
All that happened yesterday. Today, they put the bulkhead in while finishing up the backfill.
The bulkhead stairs are pre-made of cast concrete. Our bulkhead stairs are the triangular piece on the left side in the photo above.
Below is a photo of the crane positioning the bulkhead in the hole.
The fellow down in the basement has a wireless remote control for controlling the crane. In the photo above he has positioned the steps almost in the hole. Then,
he drilled the mounting holes right in the foundation wall with this honkin’ big drill.
After that, he put bolts from the steps through the holes. and…
… he tightened the whole sheebang together with this huge, kick-ass, macho, power wrench. I guess when you are messing with concrete gadgets you need humungo tools.
Steps are done:
Bulkhead doors are in place:
While they were at it, they also dug out a few rocks:
