Garage walls completed Aug 2016

 This month the work has focused on finishing up the external walls for the garage/studio, waterproofing the external walls with 2 coats of KA slurry, a radon/waterproof barrier, insulation and a drainage membrane. These are visible on the side view with partial backfill. Various ducts for gas, electricity and comms, and a water pipe were also fed through toward the house site.

When all this had been completed, the garage was backfilled from the large pile of material that had been stacked up for this purpose.

Meantime there has been lots of action off site, the kit has been constructed in the timber frame factory in Poland, and a great deal of planning and ordering has been going on.

The half metre gap in the gabion wall was infilled, once the drainage pipe around the entire wall had been connected up.

The house site was prepared for the insulated raft foundation. The L-shaped edge insulation slabs having been cut to shape to fit the unusual shape of the house.

Garage starts upward - 22-29 July 2016

Following the pour of the foundations, the base level of the Stepoc blocks are set true.









The plan is to dry build up the wall on the boundary in at least two stages, with reinforcement added at each steps, and the waterproofing slurry on the exterior added by over-reaching, where the access is too tight for a person to be behind.




Once the Stepoc has been built up, it will be filled with concrete, using a pump, and it will then be strong enough to withstand ground pressure around it.

And here is the Stepoc blockwork finished with scaffold ready for pour of concrete.
Unfortunately no concrete pump is available this week, probably due to trades fortnight, so site work stops and builders go on holiday too.

Foundations for garage - July 2016

Foundations for garage 11-15 July
This week was all about final excavations of garage foundation and constructing steel reinfocement.
Drains and conduits for all services were installed.
Builders used electric tool to cut and bend steel, and excavated the toes with wood frame around them.
Occasional heavy showers later in the week interrupted progress.
Radon/DPM installed over insulation.




Steel reinforcement for concrete raft is set out on DPM, with leads for vertical reinforcement of Stepoc walls, 18-19 July.














The concrete pour commences on 20 July, with severe thunderstorms and weather warnings forecast. Two and a half concrete trucks arrive through the morning, from 1000 to 1230.













And the pour is completed soon after mid-day.

Out of [a hole in] the ground - June 2016

On site had arrived various bits of kit for the house, particularly insulation for under the house, and large quantities of Stepoc hollow concrete blocks for the retaining walls from which the garage was to be built.

A bit of a stooshie arose with the Council who required the tree protective fencing moved to a position 12 x DBH [diam at breast height] of the TPO trees. Unfortunately the contractor had placed the fencing at a nearer distance that was less than the relevant BS, and taken out soil. These issues take a wee while to resolve, since officers are busy people, and difficult to gather together. So fencing was moved and securely fixed and soil replaced. The bureaucratic imperative was responded to and the revised fencing position was inspected and eventually approved.

Meantime, once we had resolved the Catch22 situation above, we set to to build the gabion wall, in order to support one of the TPO trees - actually a self seeded sycamore of considerable size - perched up 3m above ground level. 3 rows of gabions were wired up, tied together, filled with stones with the front face set: the base layer 2m deep x 1m x 1m on a bed of Type1 and tilted back at 7deg; the middle layer of 1.5m x 1m x 1m stepped back 100mm, and the top layer of 1m x 1m x 1m likewise.
And soon enough we were also perched 3m above ground level, after a week of hard work tying up the gabions with wire and filling them with stones.



Things were going up,it felt like we were really under way. However we were to go down again next, since once the site had been levelled and covered with Type1, trenches were excavated for the foundations, and in particular for the 'toes' to stop the walls from sliding away under any pressure from the supported earth.
These were lined with Radon proof sheet and filled with steel cages, prior to the pouring of concrete.

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.

Tree Works - Easter 2015

                     Before                         
 Easter 2015: Tree Works.

Left is the view of the site before tree works were started. The site was generously covered with self seeded trees, mainly birch and a line of more mature Scots Pine, but also a sitka and various other species. There were a number of trees with Preservation Orders on them, 2 Chestnut, 5 Lime, 1 Sycamore and 1 Scots Pine - probably the reason for the site remaining undeveloped.

My aim was to remove the overcrowding, prefer the Scots Pine and the birch. I also reached agreement with the Council Tree people to remove some of the trees with TPOs, to be replaced with other trees, and to lift the crowns of the other TPO trees. So after going out to tender to a number of firms, a squad of men and machines arrived, fenced off the site, and set to removing the trees and climbing up others to prune the limbs.

                      After