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.   

Commencement Notice

The Commencement Notice went in yesterday 30th July.

We have had to send in revised drawings of the polishing filter showing new longitudinal and cross section through the filter detailing the existing and new ground levels and invert levels. This is all to do with our waste water system.

We have also sent in the Provisional BER.

We have asked for the 18th August as the commencement date.

Hope it all comes back OK from the council.

BER and ESB

The Provisional BER (Building Energy Rating) has been done on the house. Its is done to prove how energy efficient the house is. The rating is an A2 which is very good with yearly usage of 42.2 kW/m2. We hope to reduce this to below 35 kW/m2 when the BER is done on the completed house.

The ESB (Electric Supply Board)  have said that they will be able to get us the electricity supply that we need. The cost is €1807.00 which has been sent.

Full Planning Permission Received

We have received the Full Planning Permission letter from the council.

We now have to send them back the Commencement Notice which gives the council two weeks notice of when we want to start works on site.

The first thing we need to do is to make the access into the site and level out the area around the house for the piling rig to sit on.

We have asked 6 piling company's and 4 ground workers for prices.

We will be deciding very soon.

Site Insurance

Sorted out the All Risk Self Build site insurance with Frost Insurance. This will start on the 23rd July 2012 which is the provisional start date that we have.

Permission Granted !!!!

Great news today we received a letter from the council granting us permission for our new house build.

Its been a dream of ours for twenty odd years to be able to build our own house and we are now one step closer.

As Michael our architect said this morning the real work starts now.

Looking forward to it with fear and excitement. 

There are ten Planning Conditions all of them seam to be OK. Details below.

Further Information Update

All six items of the Further Information letter have been handed in to the Planning Dept. yesterday 18th May 2012.

We should be able to start work in ten weeks time. Four weeks for the Planning Dept. to give us a decision, four weeks for any local objections to be lodged and then two weeks for us to give in the Notice of Commencement.

The first thing I have to arrange is for the roadway to be constructed to the site, all 100m of it.Then the firm ground for the piling rig to sit on. Lots of stone is coming on to the site.