Drain tile

This is drain tile*.

And this...

... is why we need drain tile. There's a lot of water down in that hole. The soil on the back of the house is much more clay-ey than the soil at the front, and doesn't drain nearly as well. We don't want the basement to look like this (puddles of muddy water all over) when it's all done!

The water also will make it difficult for the crew to work tomorrow pouring the footings, so Matt worked today with our shop vac sucking it up and carrying it out in buckets and dumping it away from the addition.

 Up, up, up the ladder...

 And, of course, Owen was not about to miss out on the fun, so he got to run the vacuum while Matt carried the buckets out. One fill of the shop vac makes four smaller buckets of water.

* drain tile, for those of you who don't know, is perforated plastic pipe that runs around the outside of the footing to collect any water that does end up soaking down that way, and then drains it into a sump basket from which it can be pumped out.