Soil Testing & String Lines

The geotechnical engineer did five borings to test our soil. According to his report, we passed. So, we have a good dirt to build on - we're happy about that. Here's a picture of one of the borings they did.


Adam and I worked this past weekend on the batter boards and string lines. Here's how this works . . . We nail together some 2x4s and stick them in the ground on the outside of the corners of the house. Then, we run string from board to board, this corresponds to the exterior perimeter of our house. The intersection of the strings mark the corner of the house. This is shown in the picture below.


To simply things, we made a rectangle of the outer most walls. We will measure off these lines to find the inside corners. This means two of our corners are "imaginary", because they fall outside the actual house perimeter. This diagram shows what I mean.

We now have a perfect rectangle for our house. The angles are all 90-degrees and the lengths are correct - this took some adjusting. Here's what everything looks like now.