Work Started at Last! ! !

Work on site started on Wed 5th Sept.

The first job was to move the ditch which flows past the front of the site this is because the original ditch will be covered by the new frontage. approx length 50m. 18m of the ditch which goes under the new entrance to the house and the right of way is piped the rest is an open ditch.

3x6m 450mm dia pipe.

New drain along road

Going into the plastic pipe

The next was to create the shape of the drive to the house which needs to be raised by about 1m near the road side entrance.

View from the road along the drive way 

Sweeping round to the house

Then we had to dig out the cutting out of the hill which will form the house, garage and front drive about 30m x 20m x 3.5m deep at the back and 1m deep at the front. All the soil will be moved using two dumper's a 9 ton and 6 ton. Photo of the 9 ton below.

View from the top of the site

9t Dumper

From the drive to the house and garage

About 1750 to 2000 tons of soil will be dug out and moved to form the drive way and sides on the pond also we will be rising the road height of the right of way by about 1m. All this will provide us with somewhere to put all of the soil.

Some more photo's giving an idea of the scale of the civils work and some problems on the way.

Me on my birthday

This how deep we have to go it's massive.

Dumper lost a tyre

Still going!!

And still going !

New frontage with temp fencing which will be widened to 6m from the centre of the road.

Some photo's taken from near the same place only a few days apart.

There is still a lot more soil to move, the area that will form the lawn, the terracing behind the house and all to works to form the peculation area are still to go ahead and all the banking that will form the pond.

We should finish the majority of the above works in a about two weeks. That will mean that all of the works will take about three weeks right on schedule !!!!

The good news so far is that we have found very hard soil at the bottom of the dig so that it should mean we will not be piling the foundations.

The foundation engineer will be coming next week to let us know if we can have a simple strip foundation or a raft. The price difference is substantial.