Drainage progress. Day four.

This morning I went to check the block to see what the status of the drainage was.

To my surprise, we had a second, larger digger on site. This one was brought in to break the rocks up so that they could be actually picked up and put into a truck to take them away!

It had this jack hammer attached to it.

The jack hammer.

It makes pretty neat work of the rocks.

The split rocks.

Unfortunately, I did not have my boys with me, so I had to take this instead.

I was going to name this blog post "Ten years of hard labour", as that is about the time I think that it would have taken me to breakup and move these rocks by hand! :)

Drainage progress. Day three and counting.

The drainers have been working hard now for three days. With at least one more to go!

The amount of rock they have had to work around, and remove has been a lot more than they expected. They started on Friday, were working on Saturday and today, Monday, they are still going and expect to be still going tomorrow. I hope this does not blow out extra site cost charges!

However, they have been great to talk too, and are doing the best that they can, with what they have to contend with. As I've said previously, it's a rock road ahead...

The sewer cap. 1.8m deep.

Drainage in progress. Piers shown.

About one third of what has been dug up!

Starting to connect the sewage.

Sewage detouring around a pier.

Progress so far, still going.

Drainage preparations

Last night, on her way home, Heli drove past the block and said that there was a big pile of dirt in the driveway.

Huh?

Upon investigation the next morning, my boys and I checked it out.

It is red scoria. One of the really strange things that I find about building is that at least in the case of the piering and drainage, it is documented after the fact. Whilst I understand the need for flexibility, as witnessed by the piering adventures, can't we at least have a plan??? Well, no. Not in the case of drainage. I've made some requests for placement of drainage risers. I'd have liked to have seen a plan first so that I could see what I'm getting and what I needed to add where I needed it. Nope. In this case, it is all done after the fact.

Once it's done, I'll be requesting a formalised plan drawn up. Darren from Darbecca, our independent inspector, has strongly recommended that we get all plans (piering and drainage) documented within seven days of being done. This way it's all fresh in people's minds. Or more to the point, if things go horribly wrong, and you find yourself in a VCAT hearing in 3-5 years time, the judge will (and has) asked in real cases "Why was it not documented?". It's all about protecting yourselves.

Power To The People, Reprised

Whilst I was not looking, someone snuck onto our block, dug a trench:

And put the power cables in!

In the right place too! On the outer garage wall. Which is always a bonus.

Site Cleanup - Part 2

Hmmm. I spoke too soon.

I was right, evidently, there was too much dirt in the second truck load. SO much so, that I think he ended up taking some out of the trick so he could fit his digger into it.

I do not recall seeing this there yesterday...

Site Cleanup

Given all of the rock, and the left over concrete (from the cleaned pump lines), I was wondering when they'd clean it all up before the drainer had to start their job.

My mum lives a few hours away, and she happened to be down and popped in to see me. She had also not seen the block, so I took her around to see it.

When we arrived, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the site was being scraped clean!

A small digger. It just managed to move the larger rocks. I want one!!!

The man driving the digger was nice, he also said that they did all of the PD work in the area. He also said that he'd managed to fill this truck twice!!! He may have needed a third trip, as he may not have had space for his digger to go in the rear trailer. The type of fill (clean dirt or with broken glass, rock etc left over from the demolition) determines where the loads of rubbish go. In this case, it was a 45 minute trip to empty the loads; that's where the day goes!

At least two of these loads!

So in a few days, we've gone from this:

Before.

To this:

After.

Now, at least the drainer will not have to dodge all of the surface rocks. He's going to have a hard enough time with the underground ones!

Piers Poured

My boys and I went back in the afternoon to see how the day had progressed.

They had finished for the day, and it has been completed.

The corner of the house, study side.

One of the larger blobs.

Some of the rocks that managed to be removed.

Where the garage will be.

Where the garage, portico and study will be.

Everything!

First concrete pour!

As I type this, the concrete piering is being poured!

The amount of rock was significant, as were the sizes of what was found. Some of the rocks that were not able to be moved, were bigger than a car engine, so they were simply left in place and will form part of the piering/slab. Heaven help anyone who wants to remove this slab!

About the size of a car engine. It's not going anywhere!

I am was impressed with Jamie, who was performing the digging itself. He was in constant communication with the engineers from Buratt to come up with a much needed alternative solution on the spot!

So, from 50 or so 450mm round holes, we've switched to trenching instead. If only I could convince them to do that all the way around, get right of the slab entirely and give me a joist floor, I'd be happy!

One of the many trenches.

A valiant effort to remove it, but it's saying put.

By the time that I arrived around 10:30am, the rest of the trenching had been completed and the PD building inspectors had been out to approve it. So, the concrete is flowing! Probably due to the overhead power lines, a line pump was being used, rather than the more usual overhead crane type of pump.

Instead of being attached to a crane, the line is manually moved to where it is needed.

Look mum! A baby concrete pumper!

All ready for the pour.

Hopefully I'll be able to pop back tonight to see how they went.

It's a rocky road ahead...

As expected, we've hit some issues in getting the piers down. The 450mm diameter auger was meant to go as deep as it could until it hit rock. There were a few exceptions that had to go 2m deep, as they support the house near where the pool will be.

We did not get very far. Some were only 40-50cm deep! As predicted by the soil tester, we're looking like we'll be getting some trenches dug instead of individual piers.

Most of the rocks so far have been small, but there are enough of them to get in the way of the auger, and the digger has to try to get them out, with some success. If they do not wiggle in the ground, then they are assumed to be strong enough to remain as is.

Finding a lot of fill, from the demolition (or the original house (?)) didn't help this, as there rubbish was in a highly concentrated area.

So, instead of a simple single days work, we're looking at two days at least. If the engineer needs to come onto site to review, then it may take longer.

To be fair, we knew that we were in for some issues when the demolition was done. The amount of rock that was concreted into the foundations of the previous house filled at least one whole truck full! So, it is what it is, and it's no ones fault. It just simply needs to be done.

There will be considerably more concrete used for this type of piering, not to mention the time taken. We had very expensive site costs to start with, so lets hope they do not balloon out too much!

Just getting started in the morning.

To get to the undisturbed clay, it's around 1.8m deep.

The floating rocks that have been dug up.

They've not finished yet. The rear of the house has yet to be done.

We'll see what tomorrow brings.

Progress?

We were told that the 50 odd piers were to be put in place on Tuesday, so I went past on Wednesday.

There was some progress. Several of these:

Does that count as progress? ;-)

Cut to the bone.

Literally!

On Wednesday 11th of March, Heli happened to have driven past the block on her way home. Unbeknownst to us, an excavator had been delivered and the site scrape had been started!

Yesterday (Thursday), the scrape had been completed, and by 8am the excavator had been loaded and was on it's way. What remained was the outline of the house, which is all of a sudden all-too-real and very very big! Mathematically, the house occupies 34% of the size of the block. However, it feels, quite viscerally actually, much bigger. I'm sure it will look even bigger when the slab has been poured, which should be finished within three weeks.

The remnants of a cow bone was also unearthed in the site cut (hence the title of this post).

Now that the build has actually (officially, when the site cut completed, on the Thursday) started, the level of excitement has certainly increased! Now can actually see and touch stuff!

Once the excavator had gone, the other two trucks that were waiting did their thing. The first of which dropped off the porta-loo, and second then put the fence in place and the crossover protection.

Happy days.