Preparing foundations

With the bulk excavation finished the site looks very tidy.  We now have a large area at the front where the basement will sit all nicely graded off with stone.  Also, we have 4 deep holes at the front for the pads for the front of the raft to sit.  I believe the instruction was to dig until they found rock and as you look across the site that is found from about 2m down to nearly 3 on the side nearest the entrance.  When I got there though, it was a bit of a shock to see what was actually the case.  Naturally, everything you're being told is passed off as 'just a little pad of concrete" or "just have to take that back a bit" or "just a little filling of stone".  When you see what the reality is then you need to adjust a bit and realize that frames of reference are not aligned.  Little is dependent of whether your the one paying in my opinion, and a practical exercise in their opinion.  A day of filling stone might not be a major exercise to do, but expensive to pay for.  Tip number 1 - ask how much its likely to cost!

The cross section is interesting.  The hole is the guts of 3 meters deep for a start, just to give you and idea of scale.  The top section is stone filling we've added.  The black strata looks almost like an embryonic coal seam (the area is riddled with tunnels from the old Rossmore Collieries, the dancing boards mentioned are 2 fields to the south of our site) so i can imagine that if that was further compressed over time it would become coal.  Finally at the very bottom is solid rock rather than the light shale  that makes up the bulk of the substrate.

In terms of (over)spend, the excavation was 50% more than anticipated.  This is mostly due to hitting the springs under the basement, the resulting drain and tidy up of the saturated and useless clay.  The start of what I guess will be many overruns.  We also have an as yet unknown cost of the stone filling, is was drawn on demand, so I expect another financial ripple to roll across my spreadsheet.

But - its important to be house (or site) proud and maintain it in the way you intend.  With that we have the latest in ride-on mower technology keeping our lawn trim, utterly autonomous and self-maintaining.

Now steel is coming onsite that will be used in the pads and raft foundation cages, hopefully this will start today/tomorrow and we can see the first baby steps in construction.  Also this brings us closer to the time we can access the first draw-down on our mortgage - up till now we've been paying all the costs out of our savings and will need to access the bank's money soon!