I hired Bobby Jones Concrete to do both my excavation and concrete foundation. Initially I had contacted them to just do the concrete, but they mentioned they also did digging. It was easier for me to coordinate one company to do both things; I didn’t have to go back and forth and coordinate timing with when to prep the foundation and backfill. I was incredibly happy with the work they did! I highly recommend them.

If you are just jumping in to my blog posts, check out the previous one on site prep or the entire post series: Workshop Project 2019

They had a brand new Kubota excavator to do all the digging, and the “tractor driver” Samuel was awesome. I helped a little bit with my Bobcat when I could, and Sam would use it whenever he needed to. We also had an awesome dump truck driver named Kevin – he was always full of energy and great to talk to.

Eventually we got to the point of needing to backfill the slab area and start compaction. My plans said a compaction report would be needed for anything over 12″ or so, but I didn’t take much heed to this until Sam mentioned it. My geotechnical report was done by a company that got acquired by NV5, a technical engineering and consulting firm. I hastily called them to see what they could do, and indeed, they could do the compaction report that I needed. Unfortunately the soil testing was inconclusive due to too large of rock particles, and this required observation to verify it was properly compacted. So, for about a week, I had a guy who’s sole job was to watch the compaction of each layer. He would poke it with a tool to see how it went. It was incredibly expensive to just have someone watch and inspect the compaction. I could have shopped around to find another inspector, but I didn’t have time to do it and they were onsite the next day.

One good thing about the inspection is that they said we didn’t need to sift rocks out of the dirt. In the above photo there is a large blue thing for sifting out rocks. The geotechnical report allowed rocks 8″ or less in size, and the engineer said we could simply toss out rocks that were too large.

Speaking about large rocks: there were a lot of them. Like three truckloads full, and a bunch of extra ones that were utilized to build a rock wall on the uphill side.

One fun thing was getting the compactor up my long driveway. A semi-truck delivered it to the bottom of our driveway, and we had to somehow get it up to the site. It couldn’t simply be driven up, as the roller would wreck the pavement. The guys loaded it onto their trailer; it barely fit on it, and cracked a few of the boards but it was stable. However, the F350 couldn’t make it all the way up my steep driveway — It did get pas the first corner but the truck wasn’t powerful enough to get it all the way up. So, they unloaded it on the side. Bobby Jones sent over four other guys and a truck of old plywood. We would put one piece in front of the other while Sam drove the machine up the road. I helped move boards..one at a time, and it was hard work. It took about an hour to just get it up the road.

Browse my entire series on building a workshop: The Truckee Workshop Project 2019

In the next post I write about doing the concrete slab! Making a Concrete Slab for my Truckee Workshop Project.

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Making a Workshop Slab Foundation - The Truckee Workshop Part 6