Sunday 18 May 2014

and then there were four.


It is beginning to get quite cool down this way and at 07.30 the other morning, as I drove over to my land, there was a considerable amount of mist hanging low in the valleys. It looked quite beautiful, almost like an out of focus sea with little islands of trees sticking out.

Unfortunately by the time I arrived to take a photo it had almost all evaporated.



The upside of this, of course, was a beautiful clear sunny day.

The reason for my early morning visit? See below.





All four shipping containers are now on site.

The next step is to get the footings done. But first there is still an issue with my engineering. The company I had do my plans did not (unbeknownst to me at the time) do a soil test to check on the soil type, which has a direct bearing ('scuse the pun) on the type and depth of piers I need to put down.

They simply designed footings that they thought would be appropriate for the site.

So I still need to get a soil test done - hopefully it will be fairly straightforward. I found a local engineer who can do the test but he wanted me to bring him a representative sample of the soil from the building platform. It took me an hour to dig by hand a small 250mm dia, hole 500mm deep - I can vouch for the fact that the soil will support the Taj Mahal if necessary!!


Above shows the pegging out of the eventual pier holes. There are 58 of them - 32 supporting the actual containers.

I'm itching to get started!