Day 3: Foundation Trench Building Inspection

Start of Day 3 – a slightly better photo than the end of day 2 ones, but nothing changed!

Another sunny start to the day. The last of the trench is being dug as I type this. The outside tap, which stopped working during the winter, is being fixed too so that they can make their mortar.

The building regs inspector from the council is due to arrive between 11am and 12pm. All go!

11am Update

The building inspector came and said that the trenches need to go down to 1.5m, which is the depth of the current foundations for the house (2 story house). Builders are understandably annoyed, as it means a delay of a day (at least), cancellation of the cement which was due to arrive tomorrow morning, and a lot more work. From their experience 1m is more than enough for our soil type.

I’ll be off to the shops for more treats I think! And milk, running out of milk again.

5pm Update

Another hot day, apparently it got up to 31 degrees centigrade today. I stood outside and chatted to the builders in the sun for about 10 minutes around lunch time and was soon burning and melting.

Good progress was made with the deeper trench. They had to backfill most of it to get the digger back in to place. A lot of loosening the ground with spades. They also had to put on a smaller bucket that could dig through the solid earth.

They hope to dig out the rest of the foundations tomorrow and get the inspector back out tomorrow afternoon, to hopefully give the all-clear. The cement man is pencilled in for Friday morning – luckily the builder is friends with a cement man so can get the foundations done with short notice.

New Tap!

During the cold spell over winter our outside tap stopped working and today one of the builders replaced it. He tried to fix it but it looks like the ice broke the valve. It will have to be moved next week, but for now they have water which will be needed for the mortar, if they ever get the foundations in!