Our friendly BCO have been and inspected our holes, ready for the concrete foundations of the garage. It looks very nice and well compacted he said so he’s happy, we are happy and the concrete is happy !
The concrete is coming Wednesday morning!
Category: Build Progress
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Filled around the foundations
All of the area around the foundations has now been filled to nearly the right level. The area inside the garage was filled with sand and compacted and the outsides filled with soil.
We are now ready for concreting after we place the final formwork for the pad under the central pillar between the doors.
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Electric man visit
Having paid the kings ransom on Monday, the man from EDF energy came this morning. Looked at the site and old meter and approved the route for the new cable. But he said we were using the wrong ducting!, apparently we should be using a solid duct not a twinwall. Luckily the new duct will fit inside the old so we will just have to buy some of the new and thread it though the old…
He said there is a 4-5 week lead time on work so we will have to work out when they will be needed.
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Doing Form work (not paper ones)
Sunday
Cleared last bit of topsoil alongside the sheds away by spade and barrow, then carefully marked out the four corners of the garage, checking to ensure everything was square!
Monday
Started by cutting up the OSB into strips, then pounded in support stakes along side the sheds. Each stake was checked with the dumpy level to get a nice level foundation.
Tuesday
Bought 51m of 2″x1″ batten and cut up into 90 x 600mm sharpened steaks (oops can’t eat them so they are stakes).
Placed most of the rest of the stakes around the foundations.
Thursday
Repositioned the electricity ducts to align with wall. Set the height of all the stakes set up yesterday. Started installing the formwork.
Friday
Finished the formwork on the sides and front.
Dumped a few loads of sand behind the earth tubes and compacted. Finished the formwork with the cross strip to hold up the internal wall.
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Requested BCO to come and inspect foundations
We are ready for the next inspection visit. This time it is our foundations and making sure the bottom of the trenches are on firm ground ready for 300mm thick and 300mm wide of concrete foundation’s!
Hopefully our Building Control officer will come Monday so we can order the concrete as soon as possible.
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Cutting time
Made a large saw table to expand the much smaller table saw to a usfull size.
We then cut up 6 sheets of 18mm OSB into 300mm wide strips for the foundation formwork.
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Ready to start garage foundations
Placed and compacted more sand in the garage footprint ready to install the form work for the foundations. The foundations will be 300mm thick and start 450mm below finished ground level (this is to ensure no frost effects the ground under them).
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Service trench completed
Thursday 30th
Installed all the pipes and conduits into the trench after sliding 2 x 22mm plastic plumbing pipe with foam insulation (25mm on flow and 19mm on return) into the large conduit (tried insulating with rockwool and gave it up as a bad job!).
They are from left to right :- Data, rainwater1, compressed air, rainwater2, mains water, central vac, spare, solar water & electricity.
Friday 1st Oct
Started by filling trench to approx 300mm above conduits then placed warning tapes (100mm wide polythene printed with warning messages about water & electricity below) along the trench. We then filled the trench to the top.
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Service trench
Digging initial trench from the garage to the loke and along the loke a few meters. On Tuesday we dug most of it and finished it off Wednesday morning. The trench is mostly about 1.5m deep (gets shallower towards the garage).
Installed the power & telephone ducts and the water pipe from the garage to the loke and round the corner, leaving the rest of the coils wating for the trench to be extended.
We then ran most of the connections from garage to house.
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Service connections
We need to connect the new house to the services (Electricity, Water & Phone). Currently these all come to the old house and will need to be diverted. The phone is overhead and will need to be routed underground as the overhead path intersects the new house so is not practical.
We will take all of them to the garage to use while living there, and the power and phone will be connected back to the main house later. A T junction in the water main will supply water for the house.
A trench will be cut just inside the boundary with Smiths Loke from the current pedestrian entrance (water meter), past the telegraph pole (opposite side loke via a side trench), then pick up the power and run down the plot to before the corner of the new house then turn crossing the corner of the utility room and then to the garage.
All the connections will be in conduits except cold water which is just laid in the trench.
We will install these connections between the garage and the house.
Connection Pipe / Cables Conduit Notes 1. Mains electricity 25mm2 cables 50mm Placed opposite side of trench from data cables 2. Rain water pumped from tank under garage 32mm Polythene pipe – Submerged pump in bottom of tank rated up to 7000litres per hour and 8m of head 3. Rain water back from header tank in house 32mm polythene pipe – Header tank will automatically be topped up with mains water if lack of rain 4. Insulated pipes (two) for solar heat transfer 22mm PEX Barrier pipes Inside the 150mm pipes rolled in ordinary glass fibre wool insulation (just enough for minimal heat loss during the 5 minutes transfer 5. Compressed Air 22mm PEX Barrier pipe inside the 150mm 8bar (maximum) Compresser in Garage 6. Low voltage cables CAT 5e cables 50mm Network, Telephone and other signal lines 7. Central Vacuum System – 50mm Cleaning Tasks in the Garage and Garden Room 8. Nothing – 50mm Future Expansion
