Pre-Construction Checklist

I will cover our largest responsibility in this post, the pre-construction checklist. 

First, I would like to give a shout out to Academy Mortgage. I have to say, they have been excellent in their communication. We always receive answers quickly and when it comes to wiring in money for the project, they are incredibly efficient. You can tell they have a learned working relationship with HiLine and that does alleviate some major stress factors!

I would also like to compliment HiLine thus far (I won't speak prematurely on the rest ;) ). Bill has been our pre-construction manager. He was excellent also! Very responsive to all of our questions and he works very efficiently with our excavation guy, which you will find further down in the post, is HUGE! As you all know from a prior post, we were on a timeline to get this done so we are not responsible for paying a price increase. We found out along the way that due to local shortages, concrete takes 3-4 weeks to be poured. I read our contract and was concerned about the language used. Bill and later our construction manager assured as long as our part is done, we are not held responsible for the delay in concrete. I very much appreciated the reassurance! 

Anyway, so land clearing day came!!! That's exciting, because SOMETHING is happening :D 

Sorry for the poor quality of pictures. Apparently many people do not get their porta-potties delivered until the land is cleared, but we were trying to knock that checklist out and got it right away. Above you can kind of see the rough clearing.

Next came a shocker! 

Don't be deceived by the sunny day. It was a day of gloom and doom lol As you may be able to see, there is a huge slow in the property. Actually, what you are looking at, is a hump of dirt in the front and behind it drastically drops down. It was estimated around 8 feet at the time. Our excavator and Bill chatted and the first estimate (just a personal estimate, nothing solid) was around $15k :O Yeah, my heart skipped some beats....that was NOT in the budget. Not even close! But as St. Pio says "Pray, hope and don't worry." I literally said this over and over in my head...

And good thing I did, because our excavator did miracle work!! Did I mention how amazing he is at his job yet? Yeah! He and Bill worked together to find a solution and they did it. 

This is a side view, but you can see that it is FLAT! There is a minimal slope in the back corner, but really minimal. Along with this (which you don't see) the trench was dug and temporary water was put in along with phone/internet cable. 

Bill had staked out the foundation and our excavator dug it. This was exciting to see! The temporary power pole was installed shortly after. I will note here, your pre-construction checklist is not done until your power is actually turned ON! There is a bit of a process here. Your temp pole electrician comes out and runs the cables through the trench and installs the pole. L&I has to come out and inspect, which can take a couple days. Then the trench has to be filled in by the excavator and after that your electric company will install the meter and hook up the power, which can take a couple days. Keep that in mind when you consider your timing to finish your checklist. We made it, still a couple weeks before our due date, but it is just good to know. 

At this point we were done with our checklist and transferred to the construction manager. He came out and staked some things and measured the slope. We decided to pony wall the foundation. Instead of the 15k, we are able to stay entirely within our concrete quote which had accounted for a little extra already! WOOHOO! That was a relief. 

Currently we are just waiting in line for concrete to be poured. We received a letter from HiLine in the middle of all of this, that due to natural disaster and labor shortage, they may be unable to meet their promised timeline. I believe they are extending it by 20 days for people who now sign with them. We have had some major wildfires this year, so I guess there is a lumbar shortage. We read that HiLine was actually completing homes BEFORE their build guarantee, so we are hopeful that they still will be able to meet it. This means we should be done no later than the end of April.