You nailed it. A sand pit. We had to dig the easement on the side of our Cedar Hill property in 2010.
A nightmare, and an additional $7000 in costs to stabilize the south-east corner of our house, and fix the 2' crack running approximately the same direction as the wonderful sewer pipes that are under our property to the drain built behind the Pentecostal Church on Madison. Sigh. A quick look in the city archives will see a bunch of settlements paid by the city for the massive cracks in our foundations and windows, brick/mortar after the drain system was built. Our legal duplex was "force converted" into a single dwelling and the bathroom/kitchen removed from the basement at that time.
The 2010 aggregate expense to make the soil more suitable was disgusting. And the structural engineer. However, in other news, the basement no longer floods, as had been the case since the city capped our drain and removed our sump pump in 1999.
A nightmare, and an additional $7000 in costs to stabilize the south-east corner of our house, and fix the 2' crack running approximately the same direction as the wonderful sewer pipes that are under our property to the drain built behind the Pentecostal Church on Madison. Sigh. A quick look in the city archives will see a bunch of settlements paid by the city for the massive cracks in our foundations and windows, brick/mortar after the drain system was built. Our legal duplex was "force converted" into a single dwelling and the bathroom/kitchen removed from the basement at that time.
The 2010 aggregate expense to make the soil more suitable was disgusting. And the structural engineer. However, in other news, the basement no longer floods, as had been the case since the city capped our drain and removed our sump pump in 1999.