We resumed the work on the construction of the foundation trenches shuttering along the back section of the building. The ground in several places is very hard and one place looks like an old fire pit with dark coloured very hard material.
Foundation-Trenches-Day-2-1
Foundation-Trenches-Day-2-2
Foundation-Trenches-Day-2-3
Foundation-Trenches-Day-2-4
We should have this section done tomorrow and then we can work on doing the front to back strips.
We finished off doing our flood preventive measures this morning, by putting more sand along the Loke boundary to block off several point of access for the rain water gushing down the Loke from entering our garden.
Edge-of-loke-filled-in
We also built another Berm across the edge of our driveway to join up against the garden shed to prevent any excess water from entering our house footprint which is still vulnerable to flooding as it is still 500 mm below ground level.
Driveway-to-Plot-Berm
Finally, we constructed a little diverter at the end of the upper section behind the swimming lane, to make the rain water flow into the swimming lane itself instead of pouring over the edge and down into our building plot. This would collect the rain water coming off the workshop.
End-of-Swimming-Lane-Diverter-2
End-of-Swimming-Lane-Diverter-1
All these preventive measures seems to be much needed this year compared with last year, much more so because we now have sensitive constructed modules and other building work that needs to be protected. But it (last year) didn’t seems to be so heavy with sudden thunderstorms!!
We resumed our work after our little holiday by constructing a berm to stop the rain water that flows down the Loke from entering our driveway and our house etc.
Loke-Driveway-Berm-1
Loke-Driveway-Berm-2
It is basically made using 4 lengths of 2×6 inch timber, slightly buried into the surface in the upright position and then a double line of bricks laid flat to slope upwards to meet the top of the timber from both sides. The bricks had a gap between them to allow the sharp “fines” to embed between the bricks and lock the whole lot together.
Now, we hope the rain water will flow pass and find somewhere else for it to soak away – smile!
We had another very heavy thunderstorm that dropped nearly an inch of rain in a matter of minutes (about 15 minutes in all)!! The protection we have installed to stop the workshop ground water worked just fine and also the barrier on the Loke also worked. But only by diverting the rainwater to the other end of the house and flowing into our smallest Energy Module Number 4 instead. The water went all along the whole length of our swimming lane and poured off and flowed across the plot and found the module. AND also the water off the Loke went along the whole length of the lane, turned the corner and found the gap we left for ourselves to gain access to our house building area and the water flowed into the same module.
It appears to have lifted the whole module up, even though it was completely full of water, all 2 tons of it!! Wow!
Shake of Head! Another repair Job to Do!!
Look at the video of the flood.
We started on the long job of constructing the Edge Strips for the Foundation Trenches. We went from the back right hand corner and went along the back section, running parallel to the Swimming Lane. This section will use two layers of the 89mm CLS timber planks on top of each other to form a 178mm high shuttering.
Foundation-Trenches-Day-1-2
Foundation-Trenches-Day-1
We cut a narrow gully to fit the bottom layer of the 89 mm timber and will add the 2nd layer when we have done everywhere first. We managed to complete in just the afternoon session since the morning was interrupted by rain, 3 segments (a total of 13.6 metres), another 4 more segments (about 16 metres) to go. It is quite hard ground and we are using manual labour to do the job, using spades and trowels!
This morning saw quite a lot of rain come down and we didn’t fancy working out there in the wet stuff! But it looks like it has cleared up for the afternoon so we will resume work after lunch.
we are having a little break to recharge our batteries and do other things for the next week.
Today, we finished off chopping and slicing points on about a hundred pegs, carried over from yesterday. They are short 500 mm long pieces using spare 63mm by 38mm timbers from our stock pile.
The-pile-of-about-100-pegs
Then, we inserted two more batter boards which defined all the foundation square pads to support the metal legs for the roof light complex.
One-of-the-Batter-boards-for-Pads
These were on the Left and Right sides of the house.
Then, we went around all the batter boards screwing in all the anchors needed to allow string to be hooked on and strung from front to back, or side to side, to form the layout of the foundation trenches themselves.
We actually started doing this on the back portion of the house footprint, using four set of strings to define the back two foundation lines and moved a pair of string from each of the front to back batter boards, which then overlapped the other 4 strings and we drove in steel rod at the appropriate intersection. These steel rods, with their protective green caps on, will be used to guide us when we start laying in the shuttering, starting tomorrow.
The-pins-marking-Back-wall-foundations
We will use our old stock of 89mm CLS timber to form the shuttering for the back section of the house (we will have 2 of them stacked upon each other to form a 178mm high sides), but for the front to back foundation trenches, the shuttering will be 300mm high OSB boards to provide “channels” to make it easier to push the “free flowing” concrete ready mix down towards the back section.
Here’s a timelapse of today
Skipping lunch, we put back the batter board, L2, that was moved to allow the mini-digger to dig and pile up all the excess sand soil mixture from the excavation of Energy Module Number 5.
We then verified all the batter boards to make doubly sure that they were all in positions and hadn’t moved. The Left side matches up to the Right side and the diagonal distance between L1 and R4 and L4 and R1 were very similar (within 10 mm) so that was good, very good.
Then the Front and Back were measured and they were holding good too. Only F5/B5 was mysteriously out of alignment and we will make adjustments when we come to construction of the shuttering for the foundations.
Finally, we drew out 4 set of string to form the complete outer limits of the house, and measured all 4 sides and both diagonals, to reveal that the long front and back were 21.300 meters and 21.310 meters (within 10 mm!), and the left and right were 13.860 and 13.870 (only 10 mm different again!), and the two diagonals reported in as 27.300 meters and 27.320 meters so only a 20 mm of a difference (within the side length errors). Not Bad!!
Strings-pulled-to-confirm-dimensions-of-building
We are happy with that and we will now proceed with the construction of the foundation trenches, ready for just over 12 cubic meters of ready mixed concrete.
P.S. You can see the strings if you zoom right in on the picture ….
At Long Last, we have finished all 5 energy modules, all buried in the ground and all full of water. The only signs of their presence is the red white hazard tapes marking out the locations and thin pipes sticking out of the ground.
Plot-after-all-Energy-modules-finished
It has been a long haul, which included the repair of Number 3 (it got lifted by a flood of rain water), some 50 days of work to install all these Energy Modules, they contain a total of 35,000 litres of water, which can store about 10GJ (giga-joules) or about 2700 kWh of free energy from the sun. It is a big investment of time and money but we should see a payback quite quickly over the first few years of operation once the house is built.