Walls Going Up

On Wednesday 17th October the block workers started. There will be nearly 650 150mm blocks that will be laid on top of the concrete strip foundation. We had to wait for the concrete in the foundation to cure properly before we could start the block laying.

The 150mm blocks are laid in a solid pattern then we will start with the 100mm blocks. These will be laid with a 50mm gap between them. There will be approx 6500 100mm blocks used in building the house.

 The block layers laid two rows of blocks and went away so we could infill the house with aggregate and lay a concrete slab. The aggregate was compact in 200mm layers.

 After the aggretgate has reached a predetermined level a 50mm layer of sand was laid and this was also compacted, the sand was used to protect the Radon barrier from damage. The Radon barrier also acts as a damp proof membrane. The Radon barrier has to be taped down at all the open edges.

The Radon barrier.

 A steel mesh was laid on top of the base and this was then ready for concrete. We used 15m3 of concrete which was laid using the hired Telehoist.

The concrete slab took a little longer to lay then we planned!!!

On Thursday 25th October the block layers are back to start laying the 100mm blocks, the lintels and sills also arrived today. The roof trusses are also ordered they will arrive by 2nd November.

Block layers loading blocks on to the slab.

The Telehoist is a also a fork lift truck.!!

Ready for Blockwork

Lots of work has been done on site. All the excavations were done on the site by the 19th Sept.

All the Excavations for the House Done

Then we started on the front we cleared all the soil and put down some Terram then placed 10 loads of stone on top at a cost of about €3000!!

Scraping the soil off.

300mm of Stone laid on top of the Terram,

We than started putting stone on the driveway a further 14 loads of different types of stone a 150mm to 0mm for the bottom layer and a finer 25mm to 0mm for the top layer approx 450mm in total depth.

The Stone is 450mm deep cost €4200 approx.

More Stone with Terram Below

The utilities where next the conduit for the electric was installed from where the pole will be installed to the front of the house 100m in total.Then the telecom conduit and the water pipe all about 150m.
Warning tape has to be placed above them.

The Warning Tape above the Electric Conduit

 On Wed 26th Sept. we started digging out for the strip foundations no raft foundations needed due to the hard soil we found at this depth.

The First Bucket of the Foundation

All the foundations where completed in a day and some stone was placed in the bottom of the trenches. This was compacted and levelled for the steel reinforcement to be placed on.

Foundation is 1000mm wide X 500mm deep X 65m long

All the reinforcement was done my me and took me two twelve hour days tough work especially on the knees!!

The Steel is 16mm diameter 3 No in the bottom 2 No in the top

All steel fixing done by me!!

On Monday 1st October the concrete was ordered 19m3 or 40tons approx. The first load was unloaded using the concrete lorry's on board conveyor belt system very cool.

The Conveyor on the Concrete Truck

Great Reach on the Conveyor Belt

It took us from 2.00pm to 7.00pm to lay the concrete very tired after that.


The blocks and the new site container where delivered on Friday 5th October.

640 150mm Blocks. The rest will be 100mm

20ft Steel Container cost €1650.