Footing Prep | Part 1 | Forest to Farm

Today, Brian and Terry are dealing with footings and water flow.

Most people come in and just dig out, throw a house and footing in, then worry about the ground around it later. In most cases, this allows water to come crawling in. Trust us; you do not want to have a wet basement.

Brian and Terry show where they are setting up to put some footing and foundations in. The planned location for Brian’s house is right below high ground. So what’s left is to work the water around where the house is to get a nice slope.

The goal is to take the water coming down from the hill. You don’t want it to just plow into the side of the house and then soak the crawl space. You will want to take the dirt from the back of your home and slope it back on the uphill side but downhill from the house. Then let that hill be a little bit steeper, and they're going to form and be shaped like a trough or ditch.

This goes all the way around the house site. The idea is that this sends water down through the woods, to the house, and out back through the woods. Of course, it’s going to be filled back there eventually. But isn’t it nice to have a nice-looking ditch?

While this sounds like overkill, plan out everything on paper. The more you plan, the less you make mistakes. So the first thing you want to do is:

Figure out where the slope is. Draw that on paper.
Draw the line as a curve, so you have an indicator of how steep it is.
Measure your intended layout for the house and indicate that in the paper.

Keep watching to follow Brian and Terry’s steps on footing prep.

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