Water update

Well, after one day of slight panic and charette, we seem to have come to some kind of decision in terms of the water table. For all of you coming in late, (which, by the lack of comments, that seems to be many of you) (or actually, FEW of you, but the word FEW still adequately describes the BULK of my readership.) I'm working on an addition to a house in New Canaan, CT. The contractor was digging yesterday, and began to notice water seeping (or, percalating) UP through the soil. First instinct said it was settled water from the recent rain. But as a test, the contractor went down into the hole and put spraypaint down at the lowest level of the hole. After waiting a few minutes, the paint was not laying on the dirt anymore, but floating on top of a thin layer of standing water. That water must have been coming UP rather than settling down. That's bad news.
So basically, the water table (see last post for a further description of "water table") was 30" above our proposed bottom of footing level. That means we needed to get rid of 30 INCHES of our addition in the vertical direction. This is not easy. What we ended up doing was bringing the basement from a very generous 8'-1" down to a barely legal 7'-0" in ceiling height. Also, on the first floor level, we had a very nice section of the addition that stepped down TWO steps into a sunken living room, which we had to change to only one step, salvaging 7.5". These two maneuvers, coupled with a couple other more technical, boring ones, were able to bring us ONE INCH above the recommended elevation.

SCORE!

In other Harry Elson Architect PC news, we were informed today from a past client who recently sold their apartment designed by us, that they sold said apartment for the highest price EVER PAID for a one-bedroom apartment on the Upper East side of Manhattan. THAT is saying something! At least, that's what I got from their email. It was fairly cryptic.