Saturday 23 October 2010

photos of trenches

That's the pipe that Iain put in, apparently it's for the toilet!
This is me waiting for Iain to come and help with the tamping of the concrete. This is the trenches full of concrete (not water).

Friday 22 October 2010

The Footings

What a task doing the concrete in footings is. Our trenches had filled with water due to the inclement weather! It p****d it down for a good 24 hours! I went to Tain and bought a water pump, we put the concrete delivery off until Friday afternoon then we spent Thursday trying to sweep the water to where the pump was, ever tried sweeping water uphill. Also all the breeze blocks and cement were delivered in the rain, while we're trying to empty the water out of the trenches!!!!! I attempted to move the cement to the barn, big mistake, I didn't realise how heavy a bag of cement is. So that job got left for Iain (a lot of jobs get left for Iain)
Friday morning arrives, quite reasonable weather (not raining), I sweep water to the pump again while Iain puts the pipe in (you'll see it on the photos, when published), then we were ready for the concrete.
The concrete arrived at 1:30pm and he could only put it in part of the trenches, so after he'd filled one (small, very small) corner, he filled the digger bucket and Iain drove it to different parts of the trenches while I raked the concrete to the middle, and anywhere else that the digger couldn't get to. Raking concrete reminded me of when I was small and used to make mud pies, but 2 hours of raking concrete definitely does not. We had a small patch to fill in with rocks to stop the concrete going that way and (owning up here big time) I rolled a large rock to the top of the slope and it fell on Iain's hand, he has a large lump on it now that is going black :-(
After that came the tamping, so while Iain was making a suitable tamping tool, (A lump of wood with 2 more bits of wood screwed to it for handles) I raked a higher part to a lower part and in the process of doing this, my iphone fell out of my pocket into the concrete.............It still works but I don't think I'll be able to charge it when the battery dies as the socket bit is full of concrete.
Anyway back to the tamping, I'm just not tall enough to straddle a trench and manhandle a lump of wood trying to bash the concrete (I'm sure we were just doing it to make that pattern you see on concrete), so David had to take over, luckily by this time (5pm) he was just getting up (he works nights).
The footings are in, next is blockwork!
Pictures to follow.

Wednesday 20 October 2010

First inspection

Our first inspection happened yesterday and we passed. The trenches are right and we have ordered the concrete for Friday morning.
Today our delivery of 10 tons of sand and 10 of type 2 has arrived in the showers of snow and sleet. The weather has turned just in time for the footings, still it's not unexpected when we got to October we knew we would have to work with bad weather, it is Scotland.
The caravan is quite warm as long as we keep the heaters on low, it gets cold really quickly when they are turned off. I hope this is the case when it gets really cold.

Friday 15 October 2010

Footings

The footings are nearly finished, we have large piles of soil now.
We now have to have the building inspector to come and look at them. Then we can fill them with concrete.
Although the concrete has to have 3 days notice and I would like to get it ordered for next week but we need to know when the inspector is coming first.
We have been to Inverness and hired a small compactor (wacker plate) which is to use on the footings before we fill them with concrete.
We also need to order the blocks, sand, gravel, hardcore for the foundations, it's going to be quite busy onsite for the next couple of weeks, at last.
Photos will be posted more frequently, I hope :-)

Monday 4 October 2010

Building Warrant

We have been told by the nice man in Golspie that we can (finally) start work on our house. We have a building warrant and on Wednesday we go to Nottingham for our annual Computer Troubleshooters conference.
So Iain will start digging when we get back, and I will start ordering sand, hardcore, cement (although I still need to find out if they can deliver it to here) and all the other stuff that's needed to do foundations.
Hopefully David is going to start the hole for the septic tank while we are away.
Wow at last things can start to happen, it's only taken nearly 5 months from planning permission to today!