A hole in the ground - May 2016

One of the costly and indeed uncertain elements in the process was excavation; and I had voluntarily included the Council Car park extension in my tendering process, albeit that the Council would meet their share.However these tenders generated no more than guidelines, since the prices were all provisional.

There were three areas of excavation, the Car Park Extension [1280m3] the house site lowered by 1.6m [415m3] and the garage area [480m3]. The real complication was that I was required by Planning Condition to have a soil analysis done, and this costly process uncovered a trace of asbestos - oh dear! Actually five samples were taken and only one showed contamination. Council officials believed the source was from train brakes, but more likely it was fly dumping of builders waste, since the site had been unused open access for many years. The cost of removing the allegedly contaminated soil to special landfill was prohibitive. After a great deal of huffing and puffing, and yet another soil analysis, I managed to agree that the top layer of excavated soil from the relevant part of the site could be buried on site and covered with a warning barrier. The remainder to go as normal. All this finally agreed only days before work booked to start, with various contingency plans in reserve.

So on 23 May 2016, two large diggers were on site and a fleet of up to seven 20ton wagons were taking material to different locations for re-use or for landfill. Parking was officially closed around the site - another hefty fee for the privilege. With a steady flow of lorries, the car park extension was almost finished after day 1, and by day3 there was just finishing work on the garage site. The boundary wall turned out to be built on sand, and went only a third of the way down the newly excavated hole, so it was removed.

The following day, I went in with Bill and we put up plastic sheeting covered with OSB board to protect the exposed boundary wall.