Category: Groundworks

 Today, in the lovely sunny weather we are still having here, we constructed a homemade mobile viaducts to help carry the ready mixed concrete from the lorry up on our Loke, down to the various locations across the whole site.

It is constructed from our supply of 18 mm OSB sheets, sliced up into 300 mm wide strips, which are in turn covered in strips of DPM we had left over, along with vertical 89 mm CLS timber to act as the major support struts. These formed a channel of 300 mm wide and 200 mm high sides, with a “socket” on the beginning to allow one section to “plug” into the next one down the slope.

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The first one is made slightly differently to act as the collector to interface to the cement mixer’s own metal shoot, where our collector is wide at the start and narrows down to the more regular 300 mm width.

We made 4 modules, and we just need to make one more that has a clever little side door that can be released to dam and divert the downwards flow of concrete and make it shoot out sideways for doing our front foundation strips.

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The building inspector has to check on the construction at certain critical stages and poring foundations is one of them…

So today he came and had a look at our finished foundation trenches, asked some questions and gave us the nod of approval!

 The last stage of preparing the foundations have been completed. There are two places that need reinforcement, the entertainment room (beacause of the heavy walls and roof) and around the tunnel allowing the air from the earth tubes into the house. We chopped up some steel weld mesh we had already, this has 6mm rods at 200mm grid spacing, and managed to go right around the Entertainment room’s foundation.

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We pinned it down and tied the joins together, all sitting on 50 mm thick concrete little blocks to make sure it is fully held into its correct location.

Then, we took 3 pieces of 10 mm reinforcing bars, each being 3 m long, and bent them all right angled half way along. Using some left over pieces of the weld mesh, we cable tied the three rods so they were placed 200 mm apart and again sitting on their 50 mm rocks, and also pinned down too.

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And, as they say,that is it!! Next is to order the ready mixed concrete, the free flowing kind, approximately 12 cubic metres of the stuff!

 Yesterday we completed the shuttering of the front to back trench. We then started on the entertainment room.

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Then today, we finished off the shuttering around the Entertainment room, and then did the two independent pads!

We were working in a very light rain some of the afternoon today, but we carried on and finished this phase of the foundation work.

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Tomorrow, we will start the job of digging out the content of the trenches, right around the whole house everywhere. That will probably take a couple of days, some will be easy but some will be very hard! Then after that, we put in reinforcement mesh and additional re-bars around areas where the load is particularly heavy, or the ground is not as firm and solid as the rest of land. We are taking extra care in these areas and compacting the soil and sand as much as possible, but we will also take care to have these extra reinforcing bars to ensure that the foundations are solid at all times in the future.

 We managed to finish off the front line of trenches, going around the complex air tunnel and chimney section, and continued along the final long side, F6 to B6 front to back trench.

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Just need to do the other side of the side trench and then the Entertainment room box and the 2 individual pads and that’s it!

 We carried on with the front strip of the foundation, with the completion of the Hall and Entertainment bits and also part of the Utility room too. We were constructing the shuttering around the complicated section of the air tunnel and chimney when the sky opened up and we got wet!

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We dashed in after waiting 5 minutes under the umbrella deciding that it was here to stay as forecasted, even though it was rather earlier than expected! We will resume work on Saturday.

 This afternoon, after the morning was rather damp with rain showers, we started on doing the line of the foundation trenches along the front of the house. we have completed the section from the Great Room and the Kitchen, towards the front door extension.

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Tomorrow, weather permitting, we continue along the Hall and Entertainment room section and turn the corner to do the final side trench nearest the garage. Then, all that is left to do is the 3 sides of the Entertainment room, and that’s it!