We have finally finished sieving the soil, moved the “clean” dirt (huh!) to Mount Sod, and filled 5 large (6cubic yard) skips of rubbish!!
Category: Phase 2
Phase 2 is the massive clearance of our site.
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The Massive Soil Works starts …
We start the huge task of sorting out the site, ready for the main house to be built upon!
The soil is a real mess of old garden rubbish, DIY waste and building rubble from the old little cottage, as well as old metal pipes used back in the days when the whole area was a market gardens plus clay sewage pipes running back and forth too!
We built a large sieve measuring 3feet by 2feet, with an electric powerful off-centre motor (taken from a plate ground compactor) to provide the shake and wiggle. this was mounted into a wooden rramework to hang over the top of the dumper truck to collect the “clean” dirt, to be taken away and tipped onto the mound of soil. The framework was then mounted on to the back of a large flat bed trollet to provide a collecting point for the rubbish and dumped into “ton bags”. These bags were lifted out when full and emptied into the skip.
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Tidying Up site
We have been tidying up the whole site ready for the start of phase 3 – the construction of the main house. The site clearance operation has been seeing various old piles of bricks (clay house bricks) being moved and soon the plants too!
We will have a bonfire to get rid of materials like old shelving which got damaged in the rain, chopped branches and other garden rubbish.
then the old compost heap will be spread across the whole garden to mix it well before the whole area is shoved up onto the mountain of dirt to clear away the top soil and get down to the sand.
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Waste disposal
Another of those inevitable expenses involved in demolition work is disposing of the waste. Now that the demolition is complete we have to get rid of all the waste. There is a lot of brick and concrete rubble and some general waste like carpets and other rubbish. The costs are not insignificant, a large skip for the general waste costs £135 (maybe 1.5Tons or £90/Ton) and the rubble costs £144 a lorry load (about 13 tons). But the metals make you money, disposing of the mesh from the rendering made us £30. The video show that it took 5 lorry loads to clear the rubble (£720! For about 60 Tons or £12/Ton). All those are cheap compared to disposing of the Asbestos cement panels from the house which cost £1037 for just 3.3 Tons (£315/Ton)! So all in all waste disposal has cost us 1037+720+135-30=£1862.
Grab lorry removing rubble.
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Chimney Demolition
We have now demolished the chimney stack, which was the last of the demolition tasks! We looked at the structure of the cimney and it was obvoius that it was originally designed for open wood burning fires, but was later retrofitted for burning coal.
The actuall demolition was quite easy using the mini-digger, as you can see from the movie.
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More demolition of the remaining structures.
Shaun has carried on his good work and demolished the outside loo and a old greenhouse.
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Timber, Timber and Timber!
All the timber from the Old Place has been cleared up and chucked into one huge pile!
One day there will be .. one enormous bonfire! We will burn up most of the wood but some of it is in good condition and will keep ready for future use.
All that remains is the chimney and a collection of bricks piles scattered around in the footprint of the once standing proud Old Place!
We will now clear up the rubble and old paths and old floor slabs.
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House Demolition Party
Today we had a party! We invited all our nearby family to come and have fun demolishing the Old Place!
We had six extra people here, all making great efforts in helping us break apart the wooden shell of the Old Place!
We calculated that today’s multi man & woman workforce, probably saved us at least 20 days, if not 30 days of effort! We really thank all our family for their fabulous effort in helping us!
The only thing left standing is the chimney! We will tidying up the last remaining planks of wood and rubble and have a “nice” scene of the chimney standing all by itself!
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Hazardous Asbestos Panels all in Skip
Today we have finally got all the cement panels with the asbestos, from the Old Place and all corners of the garden loaded into the skip we hired last Thursday.
We had calculated that we have about 1.5 cubic metres of of the stuff, which nearly filled the skip. Right up to the top. The skip is the biggest one they do! It is the effect of the layers and the difficulty in avoiding uneven placements of the thousands of pieces!
That is the last of the asbestos problem. At last!
