Excavation for crawl space completed. The holeunder the edge of the house is where the base of the chimney was, and the red lines show where the footers will go.

No one had any idea what the base of the chimney was going to be like: a giant boulder? a giant block of concrete? a pile of rocks? a pile of rocks cemented together? Whatever it was had been put there when the original house was built, ~1860-1870. It turned out to be a set of carefully laid large flat rocks (no morter or concrete), and took it most of a day to get them out. The piping for the geothermal system will go through the hole and then through the concrete block wall of the existing basement, which is where the unit for the geothermal system will be.

Rocks that formed the chimney base. Ellen's shoe is there to indicate scale.

The small excavator is sitting on the outside edge of the future crawl space. They dug out a trench where the piping for the geothermal system will go through the foundation and out of the crawl space, then filled the trench in again with loose dirt. Easy excavation later. The trench goes out through the loose dirt under the machine.

The (very large!) concrete truck arrives to pour the footers.

Concrete flowing into the trench for the footers.

Pouring the base for one of the posts that will support the porch.

Completed footers, with one of the post supports in the foreground

Meanwhile, inside the living room, the mantle, fireplace, and hearth have been removed, and the opening and the piano covered to block (some of) the dust. The piled up stones are the pieces of soapstone that were the hearth. Doesn't look to chaotic now, but we know it will get worse when the wall is removed completely!

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