Back-filling the Trench

The residential building code requires an overdig of at least two feet around the outside of a basement wall to allow access for waterproofing and laying a foundation drain. Since I figured that too much access to the foundation was better than too little I chose to make the ditch around the basement walls about twice that wide. The implications were that while it would be easy to get in there and do what had to be done, it would also mean having to fill about twice as much material.

The foundation drain was placed before the walls were set in place and waterproofing had been completed on one of our typical 95 degree summer days. While I don't generally allow drinking of the jobsite, since no power tools were being used, I allowed an exception this time. So during the hottest part of the day we swilled ice cold beer and slapped on the tar with rollers.


















We could not backfill until the first-floor decking was built and attached. The top of the superior walls is bolted to this floor deck every four feet with large bolts and these bolts and the weight of the floor combine to strengthen the walls against the pressure of the soil as it is piled up against the outside of the walls. I chose to wait even longer until all of the framing was done but now was the time. I wanted to get on to our final grading and build our front steps that lead up to the deck and this required that the backfilling task be completed first.

I called multiple excavation companies and they all had waiting lists as long as a month, so because of my impatient nature I decided to take on the task myself instead of waiting.

Two large piles of dirt had been left when the basement was excavated to be used for backfill so it was a matter of moving about 80 cubic yards of the stuff one bucket at a time and dropping it into the hole. I had estimated that it would be a 4 hour task but in reality it required about twice that long.

My machine is old and it smokes and groans but ultimately Slowly the piles of soil were depleted and the trench was filled.