Yippee the mass wall is now finished ..
I think this the the hardest thing we have done so far (a foretaste of things to come).
Here are some statistics – 11m long, 300mm wide and 775mm high (2.6 cubic meters). This required us to dig nearly 4 cubic meters of soil out (50 wheel barrow loads). The concrete was made with 35 bags of cement (nearly a ton) and over 200 buckets of sand and stones and it weighs over 6 tons!
And now watch it all in 2 minutes
The weather is much nicer for our last two days of working and building our Mass Wall Foundation!
The next two segments between the posts were done today. We didn’t start until the afternoon and getting the formwork in place, took a bit of fiddling. We created a collection of wooden wedges to help jam in the formwork against the heavy weight of the concrete (we discovered that the top edge especially was suffering) and the wedges did help even though we had to put in a flat board behind the wedges as well to stop them digging into the soil! So we didn’t finished the concrete production until 7:30pm!
The final day is here! At last! well only for our mass wall! We extended the formwork by joining together the other two straight pieces. It is now 3.6metres long (12feet) as the last segment we decided to do in one go! We reinforced the top edge to stop it from bulging out with the weight (over one and a half tons) of concrete! The wedges are working very nicely indeed now especially if we use a flat board to spread the load on the soft soil.
Well That’s That! PHEW!
We continue with the Mass Wall foundation strip along the fence (Tern Gardens). The weather has been rather wet later in the afternoons!
We managed to slide off our mould or technically speaking “formworks”. It took a little lever to get them started but it was fairly easy after all! Dug holes for the next three posts and filled them up with our concrete. Was just finishing when the heavens opened with a downpour (we had over 6mm in just 10minutes!).
Built new pieces of formwork (flat pieces) to join two concrete piles together. We done two for now and got our concrete production line going again!! The weather got us a bit earlier today!
Phew! What’s tomorrow going to be like!?
The replacement manhole extension tube has arrived today and it fitted quite nicely! We have left it at it’s full size for now to act as a visible warning that here lies the Sewage Processor tank and delivery drivers should be encouraged to avoid running over the tank!!!
We will landscape the garden when we are completely finished building the house and driveway and also finally decided on how deep and big the veg garden will be!
The Ground Work now commences for the Garage! We are putting in a Mass Wall foundation to hold back the soil and stabilise the concrete fence posts.
Finished clearing the area. Recycled old timber (2 by 2s) and shelves to make moulds to create the segments for fixing the fence posts. They are elongated hexagon shapes 775mm wide by 300mm thick and 775mm deep (of which 325mm is visible above ground and 450mm buried down to the frost free zone).
Finished the other 2 moulds. Started with Posts G1, G4 and G7 (numbered from the shed to the compost heap) to dig out the soil for placing the moulds in.
Mixed up just over 5 bags of cement and heaps of ballast to make the concrete and poured it in the three moulds!
We will wait and see if we can get the moulds off later when concrete is set!!
Today we filled in the old septic tank with soil to make it safe for the time being (we don’t need to dig it up until we are prepareing the ground for foundations for the main house). Started clearing the left part of the site ready for the garage (out of camera angle). The dumper truck had a check over and a couple of old rubber fuel lines were replaced and tyres pumped up.
Had a delivery of a strange object. It was about 3 feet high by a foot diameter, it had a foam material wrapped around the bottom and funnel like top to it! Most Strange! It will be collected tomorrow and delivered to the correct destination somewhere in Norfolk!
Old tank filled in!
We Are Live! The sewage is now successfully running to our new sewage processing unit. The Man and His Tanker came this morning and sucked every last bit of … umm … that smelly stuff out!
We carefully removed the end of the tank away from the old clay pipe and connected a rubber adapter to the standard plastic pipe going to the new processing unit.
Phew! Now we can go and use the toilets again!!
We have started the decommissioning process on the old septic tank. A large and smelly quantity of the semi clear waste was pumped into the new sewage processor tank, using a drill pump. It was slow (it said it could do over 1000 litres per hour) but we probably had it going in total for several hours!! We then cleaned the pipes from the buildings and we are ready for the Sewage Man and his Tank to come and pump the rest out!
(I hope he comes in time, We have our legs crossed!)
Here is the quick Review movie of installing our Sewage Processor unit and its immediate connections!
And Hey Presto…. one very clean Sewage Treatment processing unit is done and dusted!
The final day, well not quite but near enough as the air is now pumping into the processor very nicely!
Cut a narrow trench for conduit holding the air pipe from our temporary building to the processor. 
We were interrupted for half an hour by the sharp thunder storm (10:45am). Filled the trench and also finished filling over the processor unit with soil to the metal cover level. Added two more 3metre segments with a 90 degrees bend up! Filled in the Trench so we can get the car out again!!
That’s That done! Now for the smelly job .. .. diverting the old pipes and connecting them into the new marvellous processing system!