The city boy digs a hole in the ground.

As many of you know, Tracy and I are starting the process of building an addition to our house, and remodeling much of the interior. We are working with two fabulous architectural geniuses (genii?), Zac and Bjorn. This blog will chronicle the process over the next year (we hope) from beginning to end. We hope to post many images of our progress, and where appropriate, plans or other scans. Construction won't really start until the summer, so posts will relatively sparse until we get things going.

Why the title? About two and a half years ago we bought our house, which is located in the far northwest reaches of the Portland Metro Area, in unincorporated Multnomah County. Despite being only twenty minutes from downtown Portland, our area and street have a decidedly rural feel to them. We have fewer services, and many of our neighbors raise farm animals. On many mornings we are awakened by Ike, our neighbors' rooster (originally named Tina, she turned out to be a he). There are no gas lines, no cable service, and most importantly for this story, no sewers (we are, at least, connected to the city water grid).

When we were exploring the possibility of purchasing the house, which we love, I mentioned the fact to my dad that we had no sewer connection and instead would have to rely on a septic tank and field. He was understandably uneasy about that, because of the significant potential hassle we'd have to deal with if something went wrong. A short time later, when we were much closer to settling on purchasing the house, the topic came up again. This time one of my dad's friends happened to be over. When I mentioned the septic issue, he put his friend on, and he said, "Marc, I have one thing to say. Jews don't have septic tanks"--and he immediately put my dad back on the phone. Needless to say, I found this hilarious, especially because a) I don't think I knew of any Jews with septic tanks at the time (I've since found several), and b) I figure that they probably don't have sewers on kibbutzes, so they must have septic tanks there too.

Ironically, of course, the septic tank has been an ongoing issue since we purchased the house, and it's where we begin our blogging of the construction process. You see, our existing septic system, like most on the street, is old and probably way out of code. That's no problem of course, because older systems are grandfathered in as the code evolves. However, once a homeowner decides to update the house in any significant way--changing the footprint, adding plumbing, etc., the septic is required to be brought up to code. Pain. In. The. Ass. Also, there is a history of other houses on the street being required to install super duper hi-tech advanced treatment septic systems if the soil doesn't drain properly, as measured by the county. After meeting with the county, we were told to expect the worst--a crazy expensive outcome.

But we still have to try and see if maybe it won't be the worst. So the county instructed us to dig a 3x3x5 foot hole in the yard for them to come out and test. They told us to expect to hit ground water only a foot or two down--and that once we did we could stop and that would pretty much doom us to the most expensive system. So last weekend a neighbor and I set out to dig the hole. It was a disaster, since we decided to dig after a week straight of heavy rains. We hit water at 18 inches--practically a geyser--and decided to fill it back in.

Instead of throwing in the towel, I decided to wait a week and see if maybe digging would be better in dry weather. So this weekend I tried again--this time on my own--to dig the hole. As you can see from the photos, I had much more success this time, and over the course of two rainy afternoons managed to dig five feet down, without hitting anything more than very slow seeping water, a totally random plastic drainage pipe, and some rocks at exactly five feet. Now I'll admit that for the last couple of years I've suspected that my neighbors probably laugh at the city boy and his family who moved out to the (sorta) country and pretend like they have any idea of what they're doing. And I'll admit that they are right. I have no clue, and I am the city boy they know me to be. But today, just for this short moment, I have gotten down and dirty and become what I am not.

Now I've resigned myself to the fact that when the county comes out to test the soil it will be bad news, and all of this digging will have served no functional purpose. But to me it's still the first step toward our ultimate goal of making a kick ass addition to our house.