Exciting! We've got foundations! Photos from Week Three

Wow - all the piles are in and the subframe has started! What a lot of piles! There really are a lot of them... At least it means the house won't go anywhere!


Given the problems with the ground conditions that the engineers discovered, we've also had to have more piles put in - even under the ring wall foundations.



It wasn't really until this point that we realised the actual size of the house. It fits onto the section nicely - and we'll have a really nice, sunny courtyard at the back.


And here's our standard photo - looking down the section from the back to the house on the other side of the road.

Week Two - the next problem...

Well, we did always knew it was a possibility, we'd just hoped that it wouldn't turn out to be the case... Our foundation design is not suitable for the ground conditions on our section. After this piece of news came from the builders, and the engineers were called in, we've had to splash out on driven piles

Here is the lovely pile driver!

So the original plan was for the builders to auger holes for the piles down to 1.2 metres, and then concrete them in place. None of that now! This delightful little Toyota has now pounded MUCH longer piles down to 3.6 metres! We knew that the foundations on the old house were dodgy - that's why it was sinking on the sides (but not in the middle...), so it wasn't a huge surprise.

So here we are at the end of week two - some long bits of wood pounded into the ground. The new house won't be going anywhere!

Lots has happened... Week One update

Apologies to everyone who has tried to have a look at our blog and has not been able to get into it. We have been making progress, so I'm going to stick up some pictures over the next few days to bring you up to date!

Well it may not look like much to you, but to us, it looked like a whole lotta progress!

Picture below is taken from the front of the section looking toward the back - complete with drainage lines dug



And here is a picture looking in the other direction (love the house on the other side of the road). The site fence was probably the most exciting thing because it just makes the site a bit more secure...