Category: 05 Foundations – digging and concrete

Friday, 27 August 2010 / 07:24

Boards made out of compressed giant Weetabix are used to hold back the sodden soil

Saturday, 28 August 2010 / 10:59

It’s a lovely sunny Saturday morning. The rain’s stopped now, but there’s still a need for a submersible electric pump with float valve to keep the water level down while the builders are enjoying their bank holiday. I couldn’t resist giving the float a prod to see it go into action. It belched water and silt out somewhere down the garden for a while.

Saturday, 28 August 2010 / 10:59

The first lorry load of concrete was poured yesterday. Some of it went into the well which was unearthed under the existing wall. This trench has been filled before the ones beyond it (i.e. to the right of the picture) because the ground needs to be strong enough to drive thee dumper across without collapsing.

Saturday, 28 August 2010 / 11:23

Here’s a close up of the remains of the well which has been covered by the house wall for nearly 60 years. The building inspector wanted it filled with concrete, effectively turning it into a pile. It may have been partially filled when the wall was built over the top of it. Currently it’s about 7 feet deep and, curiously, the water level is always higher than the water table.

Saturday, 28 August 2010 / 11:23

It’s great to wake up on a Saturday morning and go outside to find lots of interesting machinery on the lawn. They’ve hired a larger dumper truck to carry the concrete from the lorry to the trenches.

Tuesday, 31 August 2010 / 07:32

Grab lorries are a cheaper way of disposing of waste soil and hardcore than skips. This one arrived at 7.30 am sharp. It gobbled huge chunks out of the pile. It managed about half the pile before it was full. The soil will end up in a site just this side of Pepperbox Hill near Salisbury.

Thursday, 2 September 2010 / 20:00

The last of the trenches have been dug. They’ve managed to work around the rainwater drainage pipe. The garage will need to move over or get narrower, I’m not sure which yet.

Thursday, 2 September 2010 / 20:01

This trench goes through where the mains water pipe comes through. I forgot to tell anyone about that. Must have caused a bit of water to squirt around until they got the temporary pipe in place.

As it’s Thursday night Nick’s arrived for something to eat before we have our weekly board meeting at the Gamekeeper. You can see him moving swiftly with our wine and tiramisu. Nick says that you should wear camouflaged trousers and checked shirts, regardless of fashion. And he does.

Saturday, 4 September 2010 / 14:06

All concrete has now been poured. The grab lorry was here at 7.15 this morning clunking and scraping away at the pile of clay in the front garden. There’s still a good lorry load left to be taken away. At 9.30 New Forest Hire came to pick up the digger and the dumper truck.

There’s a bit of cleaning up to be done, which I’ll do today.

This aerial shot was taken by holding the camera up on the end of a pole after setting the camera’s time delay to 10 seconds.