day two...shoring is in and now...trenching, trenching, trenching!

digging the trenches - this one will be the deepest
 because it is the furthest down the hill

 Because we live on a slope the building code requires that our footings are bearing directly onto bedrock.  When we first started designing we hired a soils engineer to come out and dig test pits to determine the depth from the top of finish grade to bedrock and the quality of the bedrock.  The structural engineer used this information to calculate how wide the footings needed to be and how much they should be embedded into the bedrock for stability.  They determined that we needed footings that are 3'-6" wide and are embedded 24" into the bedrock which was found to be anywhere from 1' to 4' below the surface.  This means the crew needs to get out the electrical paddle spades because that's a lot of soil.  They'll spend the next few days digging the trenches and hauling the soil away because we're not allowed to re-use it.

the guy on the left is our contractor -
he gets out there and works too whenever
he's on the site

when they installed the beams below the shoring they used this jack to raise
the house a bit so that it will be level again when the new footing gets poured