There’s been lots of building activity lately but I just haven’t had time to share it.

It took over 4 days to level the site compared to the estimated (quoted) 2 days because the plans weren’t entirely accurate. Hmmm, who pays for that I wonder? 15 truck loads of spoil were taken away. As a result the retaining wall at the back of the lot is 1200mm deep instead of the planned 800mm, and may need revision of the retaining wall design. Lets hope it doesn’t get washed away or collapse before we get the wall in place as those units aren’t that far away.

Then we had another setback as the excavator operator had trouble drilling through the horrible class-P fill that passes for soil. The plans required digging 31 holes below the concrete house slab, each 450 milimetres in diameter, down at least 2 metres or until they hit bedrock. But in lots of places the auger just couldn’t break through. The engineers were called in, and we find out the house slab is only a few metres away from what was a 3.5 metre cliff line. This was all covered over by the land developer. You’d think there should have to be some form of disclosure, but Caveat Emptor.

It took another couple of weeks to finally sort all that out. The upshot is less piers, but more reinforcing steel, an even thicker concrete slab – 150mm goes to 170mm whereas a conventional thickness is only 100mm, and the concrete strength goes from 25 to 32MPa.

Even though it has been an exceptionally dry June, the occasional rain still makes working on site pretty boggy.

Wednesday was a huge day for Kevin our builder. He had to get a sucker truck in to clean spoil out of the pier holes, and coordinate the concrete & pump trucks for pouring the shed slab, and house piers and footings. The house slab will be a separate pour once more steelwork and formwork is in place next week.