A Small Setback

Went downstairs tonight and on opening the basement door… my heart sank. Part of a wall that we’d been digging out had collapsed, sending soil into our cleared space.

Worse than that – the soil exposed two cement columns we had dug and filled as support, rendering them effectively useless/unreliable.

With so much of the left column exposed, and the right column so near the edge of the soil… neither would really be very stable for long.

A lot (more) soil to remove.

While some of this was already going to be removed, seeing this collapse really took the gas out of my engine. We’ve got a lot of exposed soil on several sides, and the idea that all of them could collapse unexpectedly at any point was now more of a certainty.

I’m not sure what I was thinking, prior to today. I always had some worry that the soil would collapse, but it held for a good while now. That said, I know you can’t just have a cliff face of soil exposed for weeks on end, without the chance of it shifting on you.

Our final work (pouring a concrete floor and building walls) is still a ways away. And I wasn’t sure how we’d keep things stable until that future day. On top of all that, the back porch now seems to be in an unstable way.

I got pretty despondent on seeing this. I know it’s just more soil to clear out, but this really took the wind out of my sails.

// Edit: Looking back, I probably should title this post something more than “A Small Setback.” It’s easy to write this in hindsight, but at the time… this was incredibly upsetting.

Related:
Digging Under the Back Porch, Part 9