Two plumbers later...

When we bought the house there was quite a bit of standing water in the basement. We determined that there were two problems: 1)a leaky basement and 2)a clogged floor drain. After some advice from one plumber I dug a trench from one side of the basement to the other. Turns out I got some bad advice...and now the first plumber won't call me back.

So I called another plumber to finish the job. Since the trench was already dug, we ended up replacing 95% of the cast iron drain lines in the house including the 4" vent pipe going through the roof. How much did I need to replace you ask? Only about 25% - yes, that's correct we replaced 70% more than we needed to because of bad advice.

Moral of the story: Don't take the plumber's "guess" on where the main sewage line exits the house.

On a positive note: I found a good, trustworthy plumber.

Concrete Removal

The first step in prepping for the addition was removing a 6' x 20' concrete pad and footer. (The pad was also sloped toward the house and as a result a corner of the house had severe damage - so bad that the ends of three floor joists and the sill plate were completely rotten resulting in needing to jack up the house at that corner - and that's another story...)

One of the church members has a masonry company and offered his services. Using his gas-powered wet saw he was able to score the concrete in less than 20 minutes.

Way to go Maurice!

After he scored the pad, we tried prying it up by hand. Two words - Epic Failure.

It was time to bring in the big guns...

In less than two hours we had completely removed the concrete pad.

Prepwork for the addition

We are putting an addittion on the side of the house. It will be approx. 6' x 20'. We had to remove a concrete pad and footer. Larry M. did a great job with the BobCat! At one point he had the BobCat on two wheels while removing a large piece of concrete.

More digging for the footer and foundation next...