Tagged with " contractor"
Oct 11, 2011 - House Build    No Comments

Day 6

This weekend was Thanksgiving weekend and so we hadn’t been up to the site for a couple of days, thinking that everyone would have been on holiday…… we were wrong.  When we went up this morning we were amazed to see that we had walls in our basement.  Not only did we have walls but we also had frames for windows.  It was looking like a house.

The guys had worked part of the weekend and had made brilliant progress.  When we arrived they were just finishing off the framework for the garage foundations and we were told that the cement trucks were coming in the afternoon.  So we took a few pictures and went back to the village to refuel (lunch) before going back to site for 14.00.

Well it was about 14.30 when we got there.  We found 2 trucks on site, one cement truck and one rig for pumping the cement.  All was quiet though apart from the slow turning of the cement in the truck.  The rig was broken 🙁 It took 6 guys an hour to fix the broken rig and get it functioning again.  At one point there was a man inside the rig trying to unblock it.  The space was so tiny we wondered if he would get back out of it again.  Every so often we would see a hand come out of this little window to get a hammer or some other implement to hit the rig with.

At 15.30 it started to pump and we watched as they filled the garage foundation, the pillar supports for our steps and then the basement walls.  After an hour they were about 2 feet up the inside of the walls – with another 7 feet to go we decided it was probably best to head home.  We also needed to make the most of a clear space behind the car.  With the hour long hold up there were now 3 cement trucks and the rig on site, as well as the contractors vehicles and the fourth truck was due.  Time to make a quick exit.

Oct 7, 2011 - House Build    No Comments

Day 2….

And so to Day 2….and better weather than the first day.  When we left site yesterday there was a bit of a hole in the ground but still a fair way to go.  We arrived on the build site this morning at around 11.30 to find that in that morning they had finished digging out the basement, set up the frame work to take the concrete for the foundations and were in the process of making the whole thing level – now that’s fast working.  Oh and they had also dug a 5 foot deep trench approximately 80 feet long to take away the drainage water.

It is amazing at how quickly they have progressed.  Yesterday it was a field – today we can start to see the layout of the house 🙂  We only hung around for 10 minutes as we didn’t want the team to think that we were watching their every move (just most of them 🙂 )

At 15.45 we returned to site just to see how things were progressing, and, they were.  There was a cement truck up on site and the foundation had been poured.  We have a very accurate builder working on our house, he informed us that he had only 1 shovel of cement left from the amount that he had ordered – now there’s knowing your trade.

The gravel was being put into the rest of the foundation by Terry (digger driver). Again it was amazing – he managed to pour the gravel out of the huge bucket on the end of the digger onto the exact spot it was required and only cms from the cement that was setting.  Skill!!!!!!

When we left site today the cement was setting and the rest of the foundation was level.  The trench for the drainage pipes had been finished and half backfilled and all were off for a well earned beer, (I am guessing on this last part but I don’t think I am far off)

 

 

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