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 3rd to 10th January 2004

The excavation and demolition work continued well.  The hole got bigger and bigger and the spoil heap got bigger - luckily we are able to dispose of all the waste on site.  The existing milking shed and cottage were rapidly reduced to a pile of rubble (despite the power still being live - oops!). As we had power to the site this was moved to a temporary supply by the site office (aka old caravan) along with a phone line - makes life easier and more comfortable.

Once the hole was almost completed obvious changes rapidly slowed down and the number of decisions and worries increased.  My biggest concern was and still is the state of the wall at the back of the excavation - 4.2m high.  The bottom half is solid rock but the top half is large rocks and brash and doesn't look too stable.  The original plan was to have a twin skinned block wall, filled with reinforcement mesh and waterproof concrete.  Looking at the face of the wall we debated a million solutions, decided on self supporting shuttering for a solid concrete wall and then, when the wall had stood for a few days without issue went back to the original plan.

Having spent ages digging out we then started deliveries - the first being 4 loads of stone scalpings to build up the driveway and stem the soup of mud that was developing.  Next was a full load of reinforcement mesh and bar - this was a FULL load and I was very happy we still had the diggers on site to sling the material off the wagon and move it on site.  We have a large amount delivered as all of the slab, basement walls and the free standing retaining wall are reinforced.  Comments were made about ship building rather than house building.

Work then progressed on getting the mesh for the slab in place - then it rained and rained.  We only lost one day of work but the next morning we had to rip out all of the mesh we had laid and clear the mud and rocks washed off the excavation walls.  We also have a couple of steady streams coming in through the walls - good job we are going for waterproof concrete - despite it being £100 per m3.

After clearing out the mud once we were pretty sure we didn't want to do it again so it was full steam to laying the slab - 6 loads delivered and laid on Saturday 10th actually kicking off the construction phase as opposed to the destructive phase.

However we do still have that horrible excavation wall - this won't be totally solved until we have groundfloor beams and blocks in place as this will be when the retaining wall gets it's full design strength.

In the interim I have been sorting out blockworkers, trying to track down stonemasons and ordering blocks, sand, cement and so on. We have made one oversight that has led to one change in design - we had specified concrete stairs from basement to ground floor but we had not done any work on pricing these nor getting them supplied. Given our keenness to get the basement complete this has gone out of the window and we will find an alternative solution.