Roselea

Category: Build Progress

  • Leach Field – the Final 6 days!

    The work continues .. ..

    Day 7 – Friday

    Finished off the sand layer to required depth (700mm). Marked out the trench lines ready for the 40mm stones.

    Day 7 - End of Day
    Day 7 – End of Day

    Day 8 – Saturday

    First load of the 40mm stones to the depth of 300mm.

    Day 8 - End of Day
    Day 8 – End of Day

    Day 9 – Sunday

    Finished the stones.

    Day 9 - 3pm Stones all down
    Day 9 – 3pm Stones all down

    Installed the leaky pipes and bed them in on the correct level (1 in 200) no more than 50mm lower from start to the farthest point!

    Day 9 - 6pm Pipes installed
    Day 9 – 6pm Pipes installed

    Day 10 – Monday

    Collect up the remaining stones. The building Control officer came (just a flicker of him at 11:30am!!!), he says “Looks good!” Delivery of 20tons of 10mm stones.

    Day 10 - Ready for inspection
    Day 10 – Ready for inspection

    Day 11 – Wednesday

    Put remaining 40mm stones over the pipes. Cover the whole area with a layer of the geotextile and weighted it down.

    Day 11 - 1pm Top Geo-texile in place
    Day 11 – 1pm Top Geo-texile in place

    Started filling in everything!

    Day 11 - EOD & Ramps gone
    Day 11 – EOD & Ramps gone

    Day 12 – Thursday

    Continued and finished filling in the hole.

    Day 12 - EOD & The Holes gone
    Day 12 – EOD & The Holes gone

    Well That’s that!

  • Building Control's First Inspection Visit!

    Dave our Building Control Officer came today to inspect our Leach field and the pipes. He said “OK” and that was that! Painless! So Far! He asked to see the Sewage Processor unit in its hole before filling. We also gave him the Structual Report of the garage for his consideration.

  • First 6 days of Leach field construction

    We have been busy for the last week… On Friday we set out the trench lines for the leach field.

    Day 1 – Saturday

    Marked out and dug the first trench next to the hedge.

    Day 1 - A neat trench
    Day 1 – A neat trench

    Day 2 – Sunday

    Made a dispenser for the Geo-textile. Then started the cross trenches so we could lay the geotextile in the first trench and partially refill. The problem was the corners started to collapse into the first trench.

    Day 2 - Trench After the corner fell in
    Day 2 – After the corner fell in

    Dug out the collapsed stuff and tried the geotextile. There wasn’t enough intact walls to support the geotextile !

    Day 2 – After we tried the Geotextile

    Day 3 – Monday

    So we decided we would just dig the whole thing out! Then line with geotextile and refill in layers while compacting it down. Most of the hole dug out today.

    Day 3 - A Big Hole
    Day 3 – A Big Hole

    Day 3 - Pile of Dirt
    Day 3 – Pile of Dirt
    Day 3 - Pile of Sand
    Day 3 – Pile of Sand

    Day 4 – Tuesday

    Finished the hole and started to dig a ramp to allow machines access to the pit. Greased to digger.

    Day 5 – Wednesday

    Finished the ramp and drove the digger to the bottom! (A bit scary) Leveled the bottom and compacted

    Day 5 - Completed Hole
    Day 5 – Completed Hole
    Day 5 - The ramp
    Day 5 – The ramp

    then fixed geotextile over the whole of the hole.

    Day 5 - Geotextile lining completed
    Day 5 – Geotextile lining completed

    Started to put the sand back.

    Day 5 - End of day - some sand back in hole
    Day 5 – End of day

    Day 6 – Thursday

    Spent all day filling in the sand in thin layers and compacting as we went. Had a scare at 17:27 (see the time lapse)…

    Day 6 - End of Day - most of the sand in
    Day 6 – End of Day

    Yes the dumper rolled off on its own and Shaun was down there… Luckily I noticed it starting to move and shouted “SHAUN – GET OUT OF THE WAY” and he ran to the corner. It actually stopped as soon as it reached the bottom of the hole and wouldn’t have hit Shaun but …

  • Made Pipes for Leach field

    Trial of Leach field pipes

    We cut the drainage slots into our standard sewage pipes with a circular saw. We also did a trial layout of leach field.

  • Clear the end of the Loke.

    The last 10m of the loke has been used as dumping ground for soil, rubble and junk for many years. A few years ago our neighbor cleared a section  by hand filling a couple of skips. As our proposed driveway exits near this rubbish heap it needed to be cleared. So I used the digger and dumper to remove most of the stuff and add it to the spoil heap at the top of the site.

    The rubbish heap.
    and After

    another view of the cleared loke

  • Set up temporary fencing

    Now the hedge is gone we needed a barrier against accidents by passers by. So we pounded in a set of posts and topped them with a rail. The red and white poles show the positions of the water and electricity supplies.

    The Temporary fence

  • Ripped out most of the Hedge along the loke.

    We used the digger to pull out most of the Hedge from the Old Garage to the Front path along Smiths Loke. This will give us better access to the site and allow the re-routing of the utilities. The hedging is now sitting in a giant pile waiting to be burnt…

    The Loke a year ago
    The loke a year ago.
    Hedge Gone Now
    With the Hedge & Garage gone

  • Removed concrete garage base

    Removed the concrete base of the old garage. Started by using demolition hammer then decided to try using the mini digger.

    The mini digger wouldn’t start! The battery had gone flat over winter. Tried to jump start it with some leads we had laying around and had no joy! Went a borrowed some proper sized leads from the Garage round the corner and got it going.. But the alarm went crazy! and would not shut off. Eventually we had to shut down and disconnect the battery. When we restarted normal-lacy was restored.

    With the digger we could lift up slabs and break them with a sledge hammer. After removing two of the three sections we had to stop so we could pack for our holiday.

    On the Saturday after our holiday I removed the last section by my self.
    We have set up a Webcam so we can have time-lapse videos of the work and here is the first recording…

    Removing Slab Pt 1

    And the Saturday Recording …

  • Sent plans to the engineers.

    Sent the plans of the garage to the structural engineers today.

  • Meeting with building control officer

    Have had a meeting with our building control officer this morning. A wide ranging discussion took place about our building plans.

    It loooks like we are not doing anything stupid !

    So we will now contact a structural engineer to have the design for the garage calculated.