digging a hole under a house

Having just yesterday put up temporary support walls under the house, today we dug a hole and poured the concrete pad.

Unlike some people, we dug a fairly small hole under the house. It was big enough, though… A 24″ deep, 20″ square hole was somewhat difficult dig in 15″ of clearance. A crawl space is probably the last place I’d ever choose to get rid of a body or whatever.

We both worked under the house on the digging, using large garden tools. The dirt came out easily. It was compact and solid, but not clay. We’ll end up re-using some of it after everything else is put into place.

Once the hole was dug, we put in approximately 8″ of concrete as a pad. There wasn’t space to transport the cement if mixed elsewhere, so we snaked the hose under house and mixed everything in the hole. There are 3 pieces of rebar running across the hole, and 2 longer pieces sticking straight up for the blocks to attach to. We felt very accomplished after this, and dirty.