Foundation and Cistern

When we were planning the house, we talked about putting in a water cachement system that would catch rain water run off. We wanted to use all the extra water for lawn watering and possibly more.  After living in Arizona for years where we actually had to haul all of our water, both for inside and outside use, we felt like all the extra rain is like gold seeping into the ground. Its funny, however, that putting in water cistern is not a common practice up here, as we found out through the city planning department. In fact, the reaction we received was more along the lines of "now WHAT are you doing?"  So, perhaps the idea will catch on and we will all use just a little less water.   But for now, at least we will feel 0% guilt about watering our veggie garden next summer!

Here's a picture of our stemwall and rough plumbing. When you are used to doing all the work yourself, you often get trapped in unexpected corners. Take pouring the stemwall, for example. The day the cement trucks were supposed to arrive, both our kids were sick with the flu so me, the wife, couldn't do much to help. Which just left Jeremy to tackle it on his own.  About an hour into the process, things were going downhill quickly. The chalk line we had snapped for our plumb line was disappearing in the cement and we had no idea if the cement was setting even.  But, after a desperate call to a neighbor and friend, we had enough help to get things back together before the concrete hardened. Um, lesson learned.