What are your favorite methods and tools for laying out for excavation?
Let’s say you’ve got a flat site, a foundation that is about 90′ x 80′ overall, a 4,100 sf actual footprint, and a whole lotta corners.
Our surveyor gave us stakes at our two corners that are on or near setback lines, and we re-pinned down deep with steel so as not to lose them when we stumped and grubbed. He’ll come back and provide reference pins at key corners once we’re dug, but for now, we’re on our own.
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Replies
After establishing batter boards and hubs, I string lines and spray paint for excavation.Steel curb pins come in handy for batter boards, especially if 2x stakes are hard to drive.Make sure your batterboards are back far enough so machinery won't knock them down.I use a transit ,then check for square with a 100 '-0" tape, my transit is a rough angle instrument,gets close but I always check it for square with a tape.
mike
batter boards ten feet outside cut and then mark excuvation with a bag of portland
The pic attached shows the foundation plan.
In the lower part of the pic, the entire plan is shown. There is a central "deep" part, over which the house main floor sits, with an attached garage at the "top" side, and porches and terraces on the "bottom" side. Garage, porch, and terraces all have 48" frostwall foundations . . . the house has a full 8' basement.
The upper part of the pic shows the deep part of the foundation only. It is what we'll dig for and build first. The solid line around the dotted shows a nominal 24" overdig line.
What we have is three pins the surveyor left, at the points circled.
What is your method, size of layout crew, and time needed to mark it out for the excavator?
For the digging, I use a can of spray marking paint
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Already got it. The kind the landscapers and diggers use, sprays straight down. I can borrow a triggered long handle for it so we don't even have to bend over.
Guy doing a job across the road from where we are, used those little wirestem flags. He has a many-cornered arrangement, too, and used so many of those little orange wavers, his site looked like Central Park when they had the "Gates" thing.
I can use my CAD package and spray a page with all the diag numbers we need so we can triangulate to all the corners from any two of our reference pins. Three guys and two 100 foot tapes can place all the stakes, and spray lines to connect the dots, in an hour or two.
That'll get us close enough for the overdug deep hole.
I was just wondering what others might do. I don't own a transit, so that's not an option.
Gene,
I would likely set up four batter boards, two past the end of the foundation where the circle is and two more past the other end.
They would indicate to me the long wall from the point circled and then moving to the right of the drawing, and the wall opposite and paralell to it.
I would likely also set up two more boards to indicate the end wall that is perpedicular to the other two long walls that also has the pin circled.
You now have a rectangle from which you should easily be able to pull all your measurements from.
To get the lines right for excavating in one sense is not very critical, unless of courde you totally screw it up and need to call the excavator back.
Setting up for footings (if you are using them) IS critical.
It seems to me that with the Superior Wall system, the foundation will go together like a puzzle that you started at the one pin in the corner.
I'm anal as all heck, and slow to boot. I would spend a day there (with a helper) setting up for the excavator. To me, it's like getting to know a new country. i want to spend some time there and get to know it real well.
I've done several excavations and foundations, but have never used a transit to do it. All the lots have been flat enough to pull lines. Go buy a transit, there not that much!
Pythagorus (sp) is our friend. Chant of the day will serve you well.
Good luck!
EricI Love A Hand That Meets My Own,
With A Hold That Causes Some Sensation.
[email protected]
For your excavation layout, I'd square up a rectangle that would catch your "top" and "bottom" lines of your foundation. I'd run a string across the top two pins and establish my two other parallel foundation lines based off of that one.Then I'd use the third point he gave me and with my handy CM calculator square up my 90' x 80' rectangle. With that rectangle, I can mark points on my lines and pull any "squares" I need to determine every point on the foundation, which I'd mark with a can of spray paint. When I lived in a state that had basements, we always used an extension level to pull our dimensions from the basement to mark out the garage/porches. I want to come help! I love laying out for excavations and footings. You start with nothing and by the end of the foundation have created the start to a great project.