Spent the morning laying the 3 layers of material down. 1st layer was standard geo-textile (grey), 2nd layer was the waterproofing EPDM rubber membrane (Black) and last was Polyfelt padding (White). The rubber was the hardest to get in position as it is one piece (of course!) and quite heavy in total.
Once the wrappings were done laying the crates was straight forward and by the end of the day 2 of the 3 layers were placed.
Did preparation work for installing the rainwater tank. Started by marking out and leveling the sand for the base of the tank, we spent so time getting the right as we don’t want the tank to be off level!
Then we humped the 87 aquacell modules down into the hole from their delivered location next to the house.
Had a relaxed day today. Went and purchased some mini access chamber raising rings and a lid to use on the rainwater tank for access into it.
Then made a hole in the top of a aquacell module for a raising ring, attached it and removed the bottom of the module to make a hole right through. Made the same size hole right thorugh another module for the middle layer of the tank, then made a hole in just the top of a final module for the bottom of the access shaft. We will place a submersible pump here.
Installed the rainwater soakaway this afternoon. We carefully leveled the area in the corner of the trench and then placed geo-textile down. Then installed 18 Aquacell modules in a 3m x 3m array, the modules were clipped together. A hole was made in to top to allow connection from the rainwater system. Finally the geo-texile was wrapped around all 6 sides.
Finished covering the pipes with fill and tidied up the pipes at the garage end.
Finished laying the pipes in the trench.
Now we have to cover them in fill (sand/soil) to the level of the bottom of the rainwater tank & soak-away. The boards down the length allows us to drive the Kanga Kid around collecting and dumping fill. We dumped fill over the edge in the corner of the trench and moved as necessary. By the end of the day we have placed half of the fill.
Lots of rain yesterday and overnight (25mm), this caused another wall collapse near the exit of the earth tubes.
Luckily its time to start filling in the trench at this point. I dug out the sheet of wood and spread the pile out a bit. We then added sand from the spoil heaps and compacted it in layers. we ended up with steep hill and the earth tubes filled to near their correct level.
We then continued to lay the heat pump pipes across the bottom of the trench. There are 6 pipes and each will snake back and forth 6 times, resulting in a pipe every 360mm along the trench. By 7PM we had spaced and fixed 2 of the snakes.
A short day… Continued to lay pipes and got the first run of pipes from the house end to the wall of the trench next to the shed done. Then the rain came! Oh Well a least we can watch the GP without a guilty conscience…
Continued to cover the earth tubes with more sand by moving the excess from the right of the L. But while compacting the fill a LARGE section of the back wall collapsed (It had not collapsed at all before even while digging out). It took hours to remove by hand.
We finished the day with all the sand distributed around ready for the heat pump pipes.
Started the installation of the heat-pump pipes by labeling them 1-6 for future connections. Then bundled them up for the first 4.5m (to connect to the house) and attached them to the righthand earth tube. Started to lay them out in the trench and the rain came again!! Oh well we can watch the Grand Prix guilt free…
Rained all day! But we did buy a submersible pump for the rainwater tank.
The rain yesterday caused a few small wall collapses and eroded some casms in the walls.
So after a little clean up we continued to place the last tubes. All tubes were inserted by luchtime.
We have decided to cover the joints in the corner with a piece of plastic as the rain water soak-away will be directly above these pipes and we don’t want water getting in. By the end of day we had covered all the pipes and compacted.
