Concrete

It ended up taking HiLine about three weeks to start framing for the concrete. I was pleasantly surprised to see the size of the house. I am not very good at visualizing and since the foundation is dug out wider than needed, I was concerned about the side yards. Everything looked great though! The concrete guys were fast. I drove out there frequently to check on the progress and was only able to catch them once. 

Before they pour the footing, the county comes out and inspects everything. This is all scheduled and handled by HiLine. We signed up for e-mail updates with the county and received notifications of the inspections. Everything passed fine. Below you can see the footing just before it is poured and then after it is poured. From this point forward is when the build guarantee kicks in.

The next steps were framing out the walls of the concrete, getting that inspected, and poured. Again, everything was fine. This all happened so fast, we never even saw the concrete wet! This whole process took about 1-2 weeks. 

A quick note here. It is the homeowners' responsibility to keep the site cleaned. We did find some debris and nails. This seems to be a trend among contractors. Not a big deal, just something you should be aware of. It probably took us about an hour to clean it all up.

Another somewhat important note! The county swings by your site about every 6-8 weeks to check on your site development, which is a separate permit that is the homeowners' responsibility. We had to fix some of our silt fencing while this pouring was going on. Our excavator actually ended up going out there to dig the silt fencing into the ground. Again, wasn't really a big deal at all, but this can happen.

The next step is also the homeowners' responsibility: back filling the foundation!