Smart Home Build — Week 1
February 11, 2025
Here are Debbie and I standing at what will be our front door.
It’s an exciting time for us right now as our home build project finally gets started. We’re in site prep stage which involves scraping the lot of vegetation, bringing in additional dirt, compacting the dirt under the foundation and grading the the areas in front and back of the house to drain to the easements in front and back.
I visited the lot yesterday (2/10) to find they had scraped a large area where the foundation will sit. They were in the process of dropping dump truck loads of dirt. I had the fortune to speak with the driver of one of the trucks and he explained to me that there will be 32 total loads of dirt. I was surprised to hear this as he had just dropped load number 25 and there was a LOT of dirt already there. This got me thinking later about just how much IS 32 dump trucks of dirt.
With a lot of help from Google I was able to estimate the amount and was amazed. Here’s the math:
- 32 Dump Truck Loads
- An Average Dump Truck Load is 14+/- Cubic Yards of Dirt
- Total Amount of Dirt Equals Roughly 448 Cubic yards
- A Cubic Yard of Dirt Equals Roughly 2100lbs Making Total Weight of 940,800lbs or 470.4 tons
- That’s Roughly 3.33" of Dirt Spread Evenly Over an Acre
These number amazed me. Now we’re not spreading the dirt over the entire lot, it’s primarily going under the foundation. My understanding is there will be approximately 18' of compacted dirt under the foundation. That accounts for roughly 2/3’s of the total so the balance will be spread around the foundation and graded to drain away from the house.
After the foundation prep is completed, they will scrape the front and back to remove the vegetation. Then it’s time for the foundation work.
Stay tuned as we move through our home build process week by week. And let Debbie and I know what you think or if you have questions. It’s great to hear your success stories and suggestions. And if you like the content I’m posting each week, don’t forget to ‘Like’ and ‘Follow.’
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