"Somebody up there is looking out for you"

Chuck called PSI (the soil engineers) last night. This morning Angela came out and did a soil test, in which she dropped a heavy weight on the same spot 20 times and measured how much it gave. She said since the soil was very hard, she proposed a solution: put in 3 or 4 truck loads of pit gravel and then compact it. The soil and the rock would have a similar "give," and the slab would be less apt to crack.

This is the best outcome we could hope for after hitting rock. The solid foundation and the inexpensive solution prompted her to say, "Somebody up there is looking out for you."

Angela will come back after the gravel is installed to bless it.

Rodney is looking to finish up before Christmas, and this is a speedy solution. He will get the gravel in today. There's a chance of rain tonight or tomorrow, and he'd like to get the gravel in before then.

Rajah talked to Chuck about the possibility of installing engineered walls, instead of poured concrete. (The engineered walls are made in a factory and are stronger than poured concrete. They have waterproofing "built in." Pit gravel is a prerequisite for the engineered walls because they are trucked in as a single piece, and must be exactly level. The pit gravel allows for this leveling.) Chuck said that he would take the plans over to Precision Walls in order to get a bid.