The Holbrook House

Since we moved in about 75% of the yard has been dug up, torn, up,  displaced or replaced. The big projects literally excavated the entire property. So where do I start… The biggest project was the replacement of the septic and I had been working on this since Sept 2016 when we first walked the house and I was told that it had not passed Title V. It became the subject of a year and a half worth of debate. Given the town rules and set backs the septic could not go where the past cesspool was placed. New abutting homes had placed their wells right on the property lines so we turned to the front yard for the solution. This went ok in theory until the plan was to install a raised mound in the front yard.

It was not what you want to hear in a already drawn out sale. But Civilized Solutions the engineering team both Paul and Eric chosen by the selling team where in my opinion the very best team I could have had to communicate with. They were one of the big reasons I held in there on this deal despite mounding bad news. Any other team could have said your not the owner and not dealt with my questions but they did and they planned for our families future. I had a lot of concerns around wanting to increase the room count from 4 to 5 rooms and was blocked in the terms of the distressed sales to find a solution. But Eric and Paul thought through options with me that would enable me to add on in the future making some of the mound concerns partial to an eventual solution should my goal be to later increase the leech field.

Whats great was that much of what I ended up with was pre-designed by me through the process and did not cost the seller any additional. What I would have gotten otherwise would not have been flexible and without civilized would have been an injustice to the house. To put it in short this house comes with 1300+ sqft attic that beckons to be completed. The town requires this house to have an extra legal bedroom in the case we want to finish that area and so the success of the project became the need for the mound to look good and house the additional capacity I would add once the seller funded septic was out of the picture.

Digging began 4/16/18 and it had been more than a year and a half we had been talking about it. It was pretty exciting until I realized that the tanks would be installed in an area that represented 1/4 of the 350+ year old great beech trees root system. This was really a terrible realization and Western Nursery was willing to give me support of their arborist to help talk me off a limb. During the dig we up rooted much of the feeder roots in that area of the tree but luckily just 6ft from the trunk we did not hit anything major (nothing more than an inch). Still this is not good for the tree.

Mark the installer from Curtis was a pleasure to have onsite and he realized how frustrated I was trying to save the tree and was able to make some adjustments to minimize additional disruption and some pipe angles t0 move away from the tree vs straight.

The job went right along the tanks came and were placed.

The front yard became a sandbox and a truck load of boulders pulled from the ground loaded and taken away. Sand and gravel to the design specifications took its place.

A trench was dug to the basement and a hole punched through the rock foundation just under the granite skirt. The pumps installed in the tanks and the electricians installed the exterior pump panels.

When they started the block wall I realized the size of the mound. While short on one side this side was much taller than I envisioned. While Mark did a great job building the wall it was not at all the aesthetic I wanted for the house. The plan was to not glue the top layer called a cap so that we could build a stacked fieldstone wall around its face to hide it. My mason John Catalano suggested to let them get in and out and not delay the project or add to the project costs by making the wall more complicated to coordinate.

Once backfilled it did not look so bad. I mean once its faced with natural stone it will actually make the front yard look more mature and give it more character. Sure I would prefer to not have it at all but when I am done it will look natural once properly landscaped. I plan to add to the rock wall light posts and other rock features. The old cess pool in the rear was pumped one last time and crushed. My plumbing team set to work diverting all of the stacks to the new exit from the rear to the side of the house.

The leech pipes, D box, and clean outs all installed before a layer of loom and seed.

The side yard which was wooded before really opened up and we had no idea there was so much space under the tree.

In the end once the grass was planted the front yard really came together. It was a very long project subject of much debate but in the end it was done.