Overexcavate & Recompact | Rancho Bellena Metal Building

Good morning. Bill Freeman here with Freeman’s Construction. We have some loud equipment running on this new job that we’re starting. We’re going to build a metal building on this large ranch in East Ramona. Today, the grader is working on the over excavate and recompact. Let me show you what’s going on here.

OVER-EX AND RECOMPACT

When we do an over-ex and recompact, we must dig out the ground, which you can see the result of that process now. He’s already excavated the dirt down and now he’s re-putting the dirt back in and he’s recompacting the fill dirt as he goes. The reason behind this is we have to take the grade down to where the soil is hardpan, which is determined by the soils engineer. The engineer visits the site to check the density or compaction of the hardpan, and then we can start filling it back in once we get the ok. The engineer then comes out periodically when we’re filling it back in to make sure the compaction is 90% plus. This prevents any settling in the building.

OLD PADS

This was an existing pad, but it actually wasn’t properly compacted. We had areas on this pad that we had to take the dirt down as much as six to seven feet in some areas. That’s one of the problems we run into with these old pads, you don’t know if they’ve been correctly graded. So, this is critical to make sure that we get the pads dug out down to the hardpan so we get a good foundation. Otherwise, we have problems down the road.

This is a beautiful area of Ramona. As you can see, it has very nice views. Before grading, we also did some locating for utilities here. We must tie in for water and tie in the sewer so the new house can have all the facilities operational here. We locate all that prior to digging so we don’t tear anything out. Have a great day.