12.   "Diana is struggling"- Who says?     November 12 - 19

Monday 

The rain came today which has delayed progress on the house.  Digging the footings has been put off until tomorrow.

Stefan and Jake improved the access to the site by widening the entrance a bit to give more manoeuvrability for the lorries, and they compacted the hardcore to give it more solidity.  Much better now.

Max visited the steel fabricator and discussed the template for setting out the positions for the holding down bolts for the steel columns.  He returned with 80 steel bolts and the polystyrene cones that give wiggle room for when they are set in the concrete.  We will make sure we take photos to show this stage in the process – scheduled for December 3^rd.  Our steel fabricator is pulling all stops out and is being very, very helpful.  Another example of local talent that’s good to find.

Max has since made the template for the holding down bolts which hopefully are in exactly the correct position.  All future accuracy rests on his workmanship. 

Max putting the 4 holding down bolts iinto the template he has made.
The polystyrene cones are dissolved after the concrete has set so that the bolts have a certain amount of wiggle room to insert into the steel columns.

The first seven sets of bolts
Nineteen sets in total for the nineteen steel columns

I have sawn the polystyrene cones to the required length so that sufficient screw is left proud of the concrete. 

We have ordered the reinforcement bars for the retaining wall to the studio which will arrive tomorrow.  I have a ‘Delivery Board’ in the site office on which I list all the deliveries due so that I keep track of them – there are going to be all sorts of things coming to site in the next months.

The Mercedes went to our neighbour who is a very handy mechanic to have its back end tidied up after my mishap with the wall. (What luck to find we can take our car in for a service just 100 yards away!)  That wall has since been demolished by the way – it has discovered that I can get my own back with little sympathy.  So the car will come back without its go faster spoiler which we discovered was not actually a genuine spoiler – so I can’t get it replaced.

I suppose the car is now better representing my age. Steady as we go from now on.

The rain has stopped and it’s looking brighter for tomorrow. The forecast promises three pretty good days.

So Monday was filled with lots of useful jobs which keep us nicely abreast of everything.

Tuesday

Western Power arrived on site today to position the new transformer pole at the bottom of the field.  This will eventually replace the one that is virtually in the garden.  All the cables that stretch across the land will then be laid underground.  That will be later in the year when we have dug all the trenches. 

Western Power
One digging - two watching.
Actually they were very efficient, we can't fault them

The pole is there, but it is difficult to see.

Stefan and Jake arrived early.  The sun was shining and all bode well for great work being done this morning.  It was important to complete the footings by midday as this was the time the Building Inspector was coming to inspect the work and give us the go ahead to pour the concrete.

Stony Littleton - you can see why

Gradually taking shape

Once trenches are dug it is important to get them filled with concrete because with rain they can easily fall in and create much larger trenches, meaning more concrete, more money, and budgets being eroded.  So we are on a bit of a treadmill now, dependent on things going smoothly.

The trenches for this first important inspection were completed in time for Max to also get shuttering in position.  Outside we were ready for the inspector, with plans laid out on the desks in the site office.  All looked good from our perspective – would it from his?

This is the shuttering through which the drains will run, buried in the concrete footings.

I felt an affinity with the inspector, he is a Welshman, and from our telephone conversations he sounded quite laid back and easy going.  We discovered that the architect had only sent plans, no elevations or sections so he was not really familiar with what he was going to be looking at.  Max gave him a pretty thorough run through of the project and we took him on to the site to show him the ground conditions and the footings.  He took one photo, asked a couple of further questions and gave us the go ahead for all the concreting, even those trenches that we hadn’t yet dug.  So we were very happy.  We do have the perfect ground as it is basically stone, stone and more stone. We don’t live in Stony Littleton without, by now, understanding pretty clearly the nature of the place we have chosen to live. You have to dig a long way down before you reach clay, or go to the bottom of the field where clay is much closer to the surface.

Soon after the inspector had left, three lorries all arrived at the site at the same time causing slight chaos at our junction.  The steel reinforcing bars in one, all the drainage fittings in another, and a ready mixed concrete lorry just testing the access before they come with a full lorry.  After much manoeuvring of HGVs backwards and forwards everything was sorted without too many villagers being caught in the mayhem.

The only trouble was that in our discussion with the ready mixed concrete salesman who had come with the lorry we discovered he had given our Wednesday slot to Waitrose.  Size matters.  So our schedule was given a serious knock.  Wednesday had been arranged as this was the day the surveyor could come and assist with the accurate location of the bolts into the concrete.  These people are much in demand and have few slots at short notice.  It looks as though these trenches are going to have to last over the weekend as Monday or Tuesday is the next possible date for everyone.  We are all disheartened, and a bit cross.  Rain is forecast before next Tuesday.

Stefan goes home and we go back to the caravan.

Our mobile rings – it’s Stefan.  As he walked in the door at home a concrete company happened to ring him looking for work.  Someone is definitely looking after us.  We are back on schedule for pouring concrete on Wednesday. 

Wednesday

The sun is shining brightly again.  

We have some time to dig another length of trench because the first of the four lorries isn’t due until midday.  All is ready by the time they come.  Because access is quite challenging the concrete is poured into the bucket of Stefan’s large machine and then he lowers it and trickles it gently into the trench.  We have 5 minutes per cubic metre without charge to unload.  Six cubic meters allows us just half an hour which is not long.  Stefan has it to a fine art and all the loads were within the target.  A tidy job was done. Jake directed the pouring by his grandfather, whilst holding the staff which bleeped as the right level was reached.

The surveyor went round after the concrete had been tamped down positioning exactly where the bolts were to be pressed into the concrete.

Office work first - The surveyor setting up the GPS and loading the Total Station so that the exact positions can be plotted on site.

Positioning the holding down bolts for the steel columns

Final adjustments to the bolts in the concrete to ensure precision 

Jake then pushed them in, and finally the surveyor did the final alignment between each set of bolts.  I’ve always wanted to know the process by which buildings are vertical, horizontal and everything is aligned.  It seems such an incredibly precise art for such a large task.

Four or five hours later it was all looking very good and Max and I felt a great relief that this first day of pouring concrete had gone so well.  Even our taciturn surveyor, who was very skeptical to start with, praised the tidiness of the operation.  We reckon this was praise indeed.  All is looking good.

Thursday

Today we would continue with digging the rest of the trenches so that we could pour more concrete on Friday.  The company who had come to the rescue were really obliging, had found a much better way of approaching the site rather than through the village, and would be happy and available to provide the lorries we needed.

The delivery of reinforcing bars roe the studio retaining wall had been worrying Max as there didn’t seem to be enough.  We couldn’t understand why there was so little even though we had followed the schedule that the structural engineers had sent us.

I rang them to check that we had understood their schedule.  It soon became clear that we hadn’t. They found it hugely funny.  Their schedule was just for 1 meter of wall.  It wasn’t exactly clear.  When explaining it, they said that I should be ordering a whole range of sizes, and that most people order a ‘bucketful of bars’ so that they can choose the length needed for each position. Initially I could see it was a rather silly mistake, but not really for them to mock.  I was becoming a little irritated by their manner and really wanted some helpful guidance on exactly the sizes and amounts we should be ordering, or at least some drawings from which we could calculate the amounts.  I was therefore somewhat baffled by this indeterminate quantity of a ‘bucketful’.  I became somewhat impatient with this attitude, especially when they implied it wasn’t their job to work out the order for us, so I ended the conversation before saying something I might later regret.

 

Half an hour later I was copied in to an email that they had sent to the architect.

“Diana is struggling with the reinforced steel order”. 

Not a good move.

If the structural engineers are not careful they will find that I will be ‘struggling’ considerably more with paying their bill if they continue in this manner.  This has been the first time I have felt rattled.  We got the order wrong, a silly mistake, but they handled our question badly.

Friday

With rain scheduled and the trenches dug and looking quite delicate in certain areas we have decided to half fill as many as possible today.  We can’t completely fill them as we need the surveyor with us to position the bolts, and he isn’t available until next Tuesday. 

We have had a really good week.  In fact in two weeks we have demolished the house and got the majority of the footings in.  Fantastic.

Next week we hope to get all the drains in.  All going to plan so far.