After the foundation was sealed and insulated with 2" of rigid insulation, we dug up the sewer line, which has a history of freezing up most winters to see if we could find anything wrong with it...



We found that it's only buried about 2 ft deep at the street, with no insulation!! Given that Anchorage's frost depth can go to 10 ft, this is a complete joke.



So we put 6" of insulation above the pipe at the street, tapering to 4" the remainder of the way to the house.



Then I e-mailed the city with a couple photos attached...hopefully they'll put it on their list of improvements to be made!

We've already backfilled the sewer line trench, done the final grading in the east and north yards, and now we're establishing grade on the south and west of the house, taking into account a myriad of details including maintaining clear drainage paths from my house to the street, lowering the upper driveway elevation about 18" to create a longer flat spot near the house, enclosing the carport to create a garage, possibly terracing the front yard....the work is just getting started actually. This project is going to take most of the summer to complete. But so far, I don't have one tiny regret, none of those nagging feelings "we should have....." so things are flowing nicely.