I’m turning to the internet for help. My wife and I are building a home in coastal South Carolina. Due to the flood zone we are in, the house will be on a raised slab, 4 blocks high. The bulder is a mid-size semi-custom local company building the whole neighborhood. We signed intent to build in June and now 6 months later, they are digging out the dirt for the second time. The first time the moisture content was too high, and for two lazy months of nothing but sunshine, they builder did nothing except perform the soil compaction or soil density tests. After they finally conceded defeat of failure after failure, they dug out the old dirt and put in new dirt. What happened the first two days they put new dirt in? Two inches of rain happnened.

After a week of that dirt failing, they are digging out the dirt yet again tomorrow and going to try for a third time. When we asked why they never covered the foundation/dirt to prevent rain from contaminating again, they said that rain doesn’t affect the results of the test. I’m no expert, but if water content is too high, then water being added will affect the test. My questions are: has any builder come across this? What can be done to prevent another failure? The only benefit is the builder is holding the note & making payments to the bank until we close.