Sewer and water trenched in

      There wasn't much progress on the plumbing and HVAC front this week, but the long Thanksgiving weekend didn't seem to stop the sewer and water installer from moving dirt and getting the long pipes from up most of the driveway.  I think the plan is to open a 7 foot deep pit to connect to the existing sewer tap, then to horizontal bore under the conservation culvert that crosses the driveway, which will then hook up to the pipes that were just laid this weekend.  They'll have the pit open on Monday so the inspector can take a look and green tag the connection, then they can cover it up so we can still access the build site.  Soon, the house will have functioning sewer and water, even if nothing in the house is connected to them.

   I saw these pipes as I approached the driveway and drive my way up to the house, but was stopped short by a 5 foot deep trench running up the right side of the driveway with the spoils denying access on the rest of the path.  I had to back out and park on the street to make my way to the house on foot through the woods.  These two lines, blue for water and black for sewer, are long enough to make it to the street side of the horizontal bore at the culvert, and they look more than long enough to reach all the necessary taps.  The water tap is in this area near the street with the sewer tap farther up the driveway.

   Here's the start of the trench, probably 175 feet from the house.  It's well past the ground transformer, which is the maximum 100 feet from the house and you can barely make out the structure from this distance.  The trench is 5 feet deep, about a foot below frost.  Most of the material coming out of the trench is sand or sandy loam.  There didn't appear to be much large root disturbance, so I don't think the health of the near by trees are in jeopardy.  With this trench, both sides of the driveway are flanked with utilities.  I'm not sure if they'll scrape away material for the driveway installation, or just build up and grade the low right side.  I'm hoping for the latter so we can get the driveway up out of the dips a bit.

   The installers got there at 6 am that morning, so they already had the entire trench opened up and the pipes laid by the time I got there.  They were just starting to fill it in and compact it down by repeatedly driving over it.  There will still be a good number of trucks driving up this way so it will naturally get compacted back down.  Getting this trenched before the winter will also help since the winter time will solidify the ground and help it compact before spring.  That's why we're also looking to get the construction grade fill in front of the house as soon as possible.

   Here's where the two pipes start near the house.  They're still about 30 feet from the house itself, so I'm guessing there will be some kind of connection here that hooks up to the runs that go to the house.  The sewer will connect to the grinder pump and the water will hook directly to the line that penetrates the house.  They were working with some kind of fusing tool in the basement but I didn't get to see them fuse the pipes together here.  I have a picture of the fusing tools down below.

   Here's where they had the ground opened up last week to connect the existing sewer penetration to the grinder pump tank.  You can see the tank on the left, and they have it at an expected finished grade.  They determined the finish grade off the basement walkout and accounted for some drainage slope away from the house.  I was eyeballing the tank location and it looks like it will modify the path that leads from the landscaping stone stairs to around the house.  As it sits, I think it's really close to the path, which is an obvious eyesore so we'll have to either shoot closer to the house or go wider, which would increase the depth of the planting beds near the house.  I think the latter might be the better way to go since we're also expecting to cram a back up generator in this area.  A deep landscaping bed will better conceal both these items.

   I got a picture of the markings on the tank before they're lost to the ground.  There's a stamped metal plate on the top cover which duplicates most of this information.  By the serial number, I can confirm that the tank is 24 inches across and 84 inches deep, which is sized appropriately for a house our size.  It only comes with one pump, but it has redundant float valves and a warning system to alert when the system isn't functioning properly.  My sister has a grinder pump and for the few years they've been living there, they haven't had to service it yet.  I'm sure a preventative maintenance schedule is prudent, but judging by the demo videos online, I don't think we'll have much to worry about.

   Here's the water penetration into the house all closed up again.  I'm not sure if they replaced the foam before they re-poured the concrete but I don't think it will be an issue if they didn't.  The foam under the rest of the slab will keep the basement warmer and this small patch won't affect the temperature very much, especially since it's inside the mechanical room.  The water meter will be hooked up to this pipe but I'm not sure if it will be bolted to the wall.  In our current house, a copper pipe penetrates the slab and is connected to copper pipe through the rest of the house.  With semi flexible poly pipe coming in and flexible PEX connecting the house, I would think the meter would need to be mechanically secured.  I guess we'll have to wait and see.

   Here are the tools they were using to fuse the polypropylene pipes.  From what I can gather, the black sewer pipe has some kind of fuseable gray connector.  I found some videos online about the operation and it looks like the two collars in the farthest machine are supposed to each hold pipes to be fused together.  The lower right tool is placed between the two and turned.  A cutting blade will square up the faces of the pipes to be joined.  The lower left tool is a heating plate, which is placed between the pipes to get them to melting temperature and removed.  The collars are then used to press the near melted ends together, fusing them and essentially making them one piece.  How it's arranged now, I think he's fusing on a fitting that will connect to the grinder pump and he'll fuse that pipe to the one buried in the ground for a seamless run.

   Here's the Omnivore grinder pump that came with the tank.  Despite the demonstration videos, I'm sure there are still some limitations on what we can put down the drain.  Most of it is probably common sense or similar to standard sewage disposal, no grease, paint, harsh chemicals, kitty litter etc.  I think we'll be fine with the normal minor plate scrapings and we don't put down "flushable" wipes anyways.  I'm hoping I won't be looking back at this post years from now, cursing the fact that we have a grinder pump.

   Here they are filling the trench after all the contents are laid.  You can see there's one section that has standing water, and that's just from ground seepage.  Eyeballing the ground, it looks like the ground water in that area is about three feet below grade. This area doesn't look particularly low, so I'm surprised there's so much water here.  It's well away from the house, and even past the point where I would want to put a workshop.  The driveway will be much higher than the water table, even with the base layers so as long as they compact the base properly, we shouldn't need to worry about driveway integrity.

   In addition to the sewer and water pipe, they also placed a below ground wire (UF-B) that will power the gate.   I didn't get a good look at it, but it looks like 12 gauge.  We'll need a 20 amp sub panel installed at the gate so 12 gauges should be fine with the 250 foot run.

   Here's the trench complete with sewer, water, gate electrical, and tracer wires.  It was nice getting a good look at the soil strata when they had the trench open.  It looks like we have about a foot of top soil, a couple feet of clean sand, with a sandy loam below it.  Some of the top might be scraped away, and maybe we can use it for final grade around the house, rather than trucking it away.  If the driveway is built up, then the top soil can be placed to the side to build up the grade on the low side of the driveway.

   The sewer tap should be connected early next week but I'm not sure when the water will be connected.  It doesn't look like the stone masons can get on the job until spring but water will be waiting for them when they arrive.  At least the plumbing can be hooked up and pressure tested.  We should be done with the water and sewer connections in a week and the plumbing and HVAC should be finishing up soon too.  We'll pause for a bit on the electrical install until the bank documents clear then it's full steam ahead over the winter time.  The holiday season is coming up, so there will probably be a little slow down on progress, but that slow down is still way faster than the progress we saw before Mike came on the job.