Glen & Kris

Driveway

Work on the driveway is just starting after a little snow in February, 2016. After turning off Douglas Mountain Road, our driveway runs about 100 feet west then makes a hairpin turn back towards the east and the house site. A lot of dirt from the hairpin was moved uphill to reduce the local grade to 10% or less. The excavators have just made it up to the house site and have begun to carve out a spot in the hill for the house. All that (mostly) rock was used to make the pan in front of the garage. Here the cut for the house is only about eight feet deep. The light band of hard granite in the far corner required a hydraulic hammer to break it up. Here is Kris standing at the base of the initial cutout for the house. The wall behind her is 12 feet tall. The cutout was eventually increased to 15 feet deep for the foundation. A close up of the rock in the cut for the house. There is lots of mineral staining and — amazingly — tiny roots as far as nine feet below the surface. Here is the finished cut for the house. That back wall is 15 feet tall. The cuts in the foreground are three feet deep to put the footings below the frost line. The top of the driveway extends about 25 feet out from the garage. About 100 feet from the house is a hammerhead turn around cut into the uphill side of the driveway. This feature allows fire trucks to turn around and is required by code. It's also a handy place to store things during construction. Here is a view looking west and down the driveway past the hammerhead. This culvert is just below the hammerhead and diverts water to an exit on the other side of the driveway. Here is the downhill exit of the culvert shown in the previous slide. Continuing down hill, the driveway makes a hairpin turn to the south and back east. Here's a look up the driveway from the hairpin turn. The total length of the driveway is about 550 feet. Rip rap is placed in the ditch on the outside of the hairpin to help control erosion. A model airplane runway runs parallel to the road with access from the bottom of the driveway. It is about 350 feet long. This is not the final grade — it will be straightened and further levelled in the near future. The entrance was originally sized at about 12 feet wide. The entrance was increased to about 22 feet wide to make entry and exit easier. This has been especially beneficial for all the heavy equipment accessing the site. Another view of the entrance looking northwest. Here is a view of the runway and the upper driveway from the road. <span class='myGreyFont'>[End of series.]</span>


The excavation for both the house and the hammerhead turn around were cut into the hill using a Case CX210C excavator. A portion of each cut into the hill included a vein of very hard granite that the bucket of the excavator could not break (the granite actually broke the bucket while excavating the house foundation). A hydraulic hammer that can exert two tons of force was mounted in the place of the excavator bucket to break the hard granite. This video shows the hammer in action on an especially hard bit in the hammerhead.

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