Preparing for the Excavation

Hey, hey! So, one of the first things I did after I found out what our round about start date on this project would be, was call 811 or 1-800-362-2764. The is the Call Before You Dig number for Ohio. By law, you are required by the Ohio Utilities Protection Service (OUPS) to contact them before beginning ANY project. They will take some basic information about the project you are doing and will contact your utility providers so they can come and mark your utility lines. In my case, I only needed the gas company to come and put out their markers. The OUPS did a search and determined that I had no buried electrical lines or transformers. They also put all of that information in an email which is handy. 9 years ago, we installed a privacy fence in our backyard, there were no such follow up emails. ;) The rule for the OUPS is that you call at least 48 hours but no more than 10 days before you start your project.

  And here's what they did. Pretty simple. And they showed up a couple days after I made the phone call. You can also schedule online at oups.org. Now, since we are having our old garage/storage shed/keeper of old junk torn down, as well as all the concrete driveway and patio removed, I needed to contact our local Habitat for Humanity/Restore to donate the still usable items. They are only open a few days a week, so I was hoping they would make it over to my house before we tore everything down. They made it with a few days to spare and took everything they could get some use out of.

These guys were quick and courteous. In and out in about 20 minutes. Unfortunately,  I still have a large amount of junk things to throw away before the back hoe shows up. Wish me luck!