The best kind of slab

One day of hard work and our foundation guys have created a masterpiece. It took 45 cement trucks, 18 guys and 10 hours of work to complete. I can't work out if it looks big or small, i guess that will be clearer as the walls go up. Now we wait 4 weeks before the bricklayers start. This is a good time for us to finalise the cabinet maker, carpenter and some of the colours. It's so exciting even though it has been a long road and there is still a highway ahead of us!

Patriotism

The first pour started today and even the concrete truck was a symbol of patriotism to all those who are building our house! The concreters commented on how deep the foundations are and initially thought we must be building a 3 storey home because the foundations are so deep. They too, were pretty shocked that we are only building single storey! Second pour to complete the rest of the foundations will be on Wednesday. Rain is forecast at this stage, so please stop doing those rain dances just for Wednesday. After that, all the dancing you like.

Ready to Pour

Today they finished all of the termite protection and the laying of the steel. There has been some issue with the engineers' final sign off, something about the width of the steel which I think has now been sorted. The council come to sign off on everything tomorrow so the plan is to do the first pour on Monday (into the trenches) and then the second pour (100mm) on top of the whole thing! that's a lot of concrete. Then comes the 4 weeks wait. All in all, the foundation process has required more time and effort and has yielded more soil and stress than first thought. I guess it has to be done properly though. Frank's dad (who is in demolition) said he pities the poor fella who tries to demolish this house in 100 years! They will get one hell of a shock when they dig down and find 1.6m footings!

..............and then there were more

Well, this is the result of 2 days work. We have pipes, plastic, some steel and a plan for concrete either over the weekend (weather dependent) or on Monday. This is the first time we have had a feel for how big the house really is, although individual rooms feel really small because of the huge ravines in between each room. Even the foundation guys are suprised at how much dirt is coming out of these holes and how long it is taking. Is was about 2.5 days digging and it will be 1.5 days for plastic and steel. I think everyone deserves a beer for all their hardwork.

We have a hole !

Finally, they started digging just after lunch today. They have dug about 1/4 of the foundations so far with the plan to pour at the end of the week. We took the opportunity to go and check out the 1.6m foundations. I got in the hole just to confirm their depth and had quite a bit of trouble getting out. Frank had to give me a reverse boost and just as he had me out and standing up, my shoe fell off and you guessed it, into the 1.6metre hole. I had to get back in and fish it out again! It is amazing how excited you can get about a couple of deep holes!