Put gravel in the bottoms of the footings. At least you'll have good
drainage around them then plus you won't have to compact it. Also, have you
thought about installing drain pipe around the building?

"John Moorhead" wrote in message
m...
Folks -

Well, I am back at it with the foundation layout and cutting of the
footings. Wif and I restrung the foundation lines and make our cut lines
for the backhoe guy again... He wanted the line 3" OUTSIDE of where the
cut
was to be.... So he showed up this morning and got started. Lo and
behold -
he didn't make his cut 3" inside the chalkline, he SPLIT the chalkline and
dug 30" deep instead of 20". Goddamn it! I needed a trench 1 foot
wide,
now the trenches vary between 18" and a bit over 24". So now I'll end up
A)
buying appx 1 acre more fill sand than I was planning; or B) renting a
compactor and tamping the soil to get my depth right, building my forms,
and
backfilling the sides and compacting that; or C) Both.

I perhaps should have gotten some other backhoe service, but this was the
only guy to return repeated calls. Sometimes I just *ucking ***HATE***
contractors. Nothing personal, to those of you who are, I was just hoping
to at least have the footings dug out before someone ****ed me off....

John