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 11th to 17th January 2004

Having got the slab in for the house last week the next step was to get the slab laid for the retaining wall behind and above the house.  The weather was poor and we weren't sure what to do but ploughed on anyway - fortunately this proved to be the right decision as the reinforcement was ready by the end of Monday.

Tuesday started with a concrete pump arriving - I'd never seen one in real life and a 32m pump is very impressive as it folds out and in the way it is remotely operated by the driver.  Suffice to say the slab for the wall was down very quickly.

When we excavated we hit a steady flow of water so it was time to get a temporary drain in place to stop the house slab looking like a swimming pool.

The other fun bit was the start of deliveries - cement, sand, blocks, mixer and so on.  And these deliveries meant we could start setting out the walls.  This was quite a fiddle and I think we must have remeasured things about 100 times.  It always seemed that any measurement made from a line would be off but when laid in blocks and motar it would be fine!  Wierd.

With the walls going up we also started laying a land drain behind the house walls - something that is going to be very well used given the water around the site.

At the end of the week we had a blockworking gang in - 70m2 laid between 8am and 2pm - shame I didn't have any more ready!  I'll learn from this mistake next time. One down side is that one of the release pins on the bucket on our digger broke that means we're stuck with the bucket and can't use the forks to lift stuff at the moment.

So at the end of the week we have 6 courses laid for most of the retaining wall, half of the house set out and given that it is mid January we've been very lucky.