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 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!
We have finished constructing the foundation trench framework.
We put in about 8 tons of crushed builders rubble (maximum 75mm / 3inch
size) and then blinded the surface with clean sharp sand (about 1.5tons).
All was compacted down several times for each layer.
This concludes the framework and now ready for the ready mixed concrete to
be poured in.
Base Dug out and Framed
Hardcore placed and compacted
Trench blinded with sand
But first, our next job is to cut the reinforcing bars into required lengths
and bent right angles for most of them. These are the vertical rods to be
placed around the edge of the foundation to line up with the block walls and
the hollows. A wooden support structure will hold the rods at the correct
level.
We have decided to start building the swimming lane first before the main house, because we had a serious problem with rain water this week, when we had very heavy rain falls gushing off the neighbours workshop and garage grounds.
So we are building a steel reinforced heavy duty block wall nearest the fence, this being the back wall of the swimming lane. Then we can rebuild the soil back up again to stabilised the ground so we can repair the fence itself too.
So the foundation is a 100mm thick concrete slab, set at the 9.200metre point (800mm below the nominal ground level), the first part of the wall will be made using 215mm wide concrete hollow blocks with steel 10mm reinforcing bars through all the holes and then ready mix concrete poured into each column to lock everything together.
The back wall is 6 blocks high (215mm each equals 1350mm high including mortar joints), which will put us above our ground level but still 500mm (at least!) below the neighbour’s soil level. For this, we will put another two layers of blocks but only using the narrower (140mm wide) hollow blocks because there is less weight and load of soil and also at this point, there is a “return” channel for the water to flow back down to the beginning and circulate around through the swimming lane. This is our natural filtration system for cleaning the water, using lots of water plants.