Swimming pools and windows to nowhere

Rain rain go away - come again another day...

Not much has been going on with seventy odd millimetres falling in the last two days.  Actually, a few things have been going on - some better than others.

On the downside, the site is looking more like a swimming complex than an extension at the moment.  The trenches have a bit of water in the bottom of them and the newly cleaned out septic tank is starting to look like a plunge pool.  Owen said the engineer might be coming around today to have a look at the footings as the soil is a little different to what he expected.  I hope he's bringing his snorkel!

How the septic should look.  The hole in the bottom is where the footing will go through the bottom.

How the septic looks now - despite a big hole in the bottom of it!

On a brighter note, the new windows and doors turned up today.  It's a pity they don't have anywhere to go at the moment.  They look a little forlorn in the garage.  It was pretty wet when they were unloading them but at least Owen and I could just supervise from the safety of the garage.  It's a pity that the delivery guys slightly damaged the bottom of one of the frames when they were unloading.  It was only a minor chip and Owen reckons he can repair it easily so we didn't send it back.  On the bright side, at least we their delivery wont hold up construction - whenever that begins!

Oh well, it all means more time for me to research the various products that we will need to start ordering in the near future.

Digging up Archeology

The builders began digging the foundations a few days ago.  It has been a bit stop start as we have discovered a few archeological finds.

Firstly, Owen found our sewer.  Well, he found it a few days ago when pulling up the concrete, but I thought it was worth a mention here.  It seems that the PVC lines were put in a bit shallow when they replaced the old stoneware lines.  The result was a crunch with the excavator and a quick call to the plumber.  Not real harm was done, we just had to hold on and not use the loo for a few hours while it was repaired.

While digging the foundations, we have been pulling up bits of old rubbish like glass bottles and then every so often a rubble drain filled with large river rocks.  We first thought these were the discharge for the septic tank.  Owen also discovered where the septic was when he shoved the scoop in and discovered a liquified mud.  He was lucky that he hadn't run the excavator into it over the previous few weeks.  When the tank was decommissioned they punched the cement cover slab into the hole and filled it up with rubble and dirt.  However, they didn't punch a drainage hole in the bottom so the soil was saturated to the point of being a sludge.

Unfortunately the footing has to go right over the middle of the tank.  Owen had to scoop the sludge out and then send Eben in to finish off the job by hand.  They then cut a hole in the bottom so that a cement pillar can be put into the shale below.  This pillar will hold the strip foundation up which will be formed over the hole.  Once all that is done, they will backfill the hole, never to be seen again.

It's lucky that the septic was where it was and not a few feet to the south.  If that had been the case, then it would have been under the foundations for the heater/fireplace which apparently would have been a much larger pain in the backside.

Anyway, after some more trenching today, Owen thinks he has solved the mystery of the rubble drains.  He thinks the whole site has been backfilled by about 8 inches or so.  When you look at the soil profile, there is a distinct layer at the top with an orange fleck through it. The bottom of this layer is throwing up strange "finds" of glass bottles, building rubble and other bits and pieces.  Under this is a darker layer of the original soil.  All this lays over a heavy clay subsoil which goes down to shale at about 1m deep.  It looks like the rubble drains were put in to drain the heavy clay soil.  They seem to criss cross the site at fairly regular intervals.

So the upshot - or downshot from a cost perspective, is that the pier foundations may have to go down a bit deeper to the shale layer.  We wont know exactly what we have to do until Owen speaks to the engineer next week.

At least we had one "find" that wasn't bad (or costly) news.  Eben found a 1950 penny so we'll have to stick that one in a frame and hang it up somewhere once the renos are done!

Setting out

The builders set out the site and started digging the foundations this week.  I was a bit worried about the size of the back deck for a minute after Owen had set it out.  It looked like the planter box was going to go all the way to the back fence!  A quick check of the measurements and we realised that we had taken a measurement form the wrong baseline, adding a nearly 2 metres to the width of the deck.

Anyway, once the set out was complete, it was good to be able to finally stand in the extension and see the dimensions in real size, laid out with bright orange spray paint and a maddening series of string lines criss crossing the site.

The living area is going to be a great size, I think.  Shez's reaction was OMG it's Huge!

And so it begins - really

Owen and Eben (no, that’s not a typo) arrived late this morning to finally get the renovations underway.  It has been a little frustrating the last few weeks waiting for things to start.  The weather has been largely to blame.  No sooner had we agreed on a start date and signed a contract with Owen then the rain started and get things pretty wet over a couple of weeks.  Then it took a couple of weeks for things to dry out.  Owen has been delayed on another job this week.  He is trying to get another job out of the ground and hit some ground water problems that kept filling up his trenches.  It’s taken a few days to sort it out, but now things are under control it’s time to start 10 Alexandra.

The first job was to put up the site fence which was pretty quick with 3 of us on the job.  Then, after lunch it was time for Owen to teach Eben how to use the masonry saw to cut the cement slab under the big shed.  He was just filling out the paperwork when we heard a big bang out on the road.  We went around front to find a car crash out on the road.  Luckily no one was seriously injured, but at least one of the cars was totalled.

Since Owen is one of the local firies, he had to head off to the station house to pick up his gear and the big red truck so he could come back and attend the accident.  While Owen was on traffic duty on one side of the newly erected fence, Eb and I were on gardening duties on the other side.  We moved the mail box over the brick fence so the postie can get thorough the site fence to it.

We also moved a temporary fence  that Brian had put up when we pulled down the shed.  It was there to keep Picasso in, but since everything is changing around the back, we needed to find somewhere new for him to roam.  Much to Picassos delight, his new run is the front yard.  He hasn’t been able to roam free in the front yard since he worked out that he could run through the bars of the front gate.  When ever Shez and I are out the front, Picasso has been confined to a leash.  Not now.  Eben and I moved the temporary fence around to block off the front yard from the balcony across to the fence on Albert St.  We also put some netting over the gate so he can’t get through the bars.  Now Picasso can roam to his hearts content out front - a good thing since the backyard is about to become a series of muddy ditches.

Owen eventually made it back and showed Eben how to use the saw.  It’s a messy and noisy job and I’m glad he was doing it and not me.  I found plenty to do at the other end of the house!  By the end of the day, Eben had a couple of cuts done through the shed slab..  There will be more fun for him tomorrow.