The money is nearly in place, the CU requires that I have the contract signed with my general contractor and have my land and current home have an estimate appraisal.  Someone from Interlake Reality came to do the appraisal back in the winter, and are hopefully sending it to the CU.  Because there is a not to exceed clause on the contract Francesco is making sure that we have everything done properly.  I have put the constraint of $300,000 on the build which is tight considering all of the natural build techniques and therefore man hours, but I can’t afford anymore, so be it. I am assuming all of this will be settled by next Friday and we can move forward.

Now, for the foundation.  I had it in my mind, (as I have for many steps of this process), incorrectly that we can easily build up the foundation with fill from the land.  I was not thinking about the earth shifting and such.  We have to make sure the foundation is stable, there is no point on building on a foundation that is going to shift extremely.  Of course all foundations do shift slightly, but I don’t want to add to that by making the ground unstable.  The problem with this of course is cost, to bring in more gravel and add more machine hours increases the cost.  So, we are in the process of seeing if we need a geological survey.

The problem with not raising the foundation is my land is very wet in a corner where I want to build.  If the current foundation raises 12 inches will it be enough?  I am gathering data now, I will talk to my neighbour who grew up here, farms here and is in construction so he’ll have a great perspective.  I am also going to really check out the land with a measuring tape to see where exactly the house will be placed and stake it out.  I will dig into the soil to see how much is there before we reach the clay/sand.  I hope to have some answers soon.

I hope it will be an easy and not costly fix.