December Images

Final Dig Out, the dark area on the walls shows how much!

Re-using our old bricks as part of the sub-base, green and cost effective.

Footings dug, note (if you are interested) the bricks topped off with compacted millwaste, giving 150mm of sub-base in total.

Footings concrete, we've elected to use the 'mix on site machines' brilliant, I'll never use readymix again.

Barrowing the concrete.

Dave doing the skilful bit (Levelling the footings).


Pouring the footing for the kitchens folding sliding doors. 1m deep, and I dug half of it!


Laying the sub-floor walls. These are the below ground sections of walls that will be under the main slab, and damp proof membrane.

Re-using some existing bricks where possible.

Once the sub-floor walls were finished, the whole area was blinded off with sand, and then the entire floor and walls was covered in 1200 guage damp proof membrane.

The whole floor and walls covered, taped and ready for pouring the slab.

Preparing to barrow the concrete.

We have a floor.

Next post: Walls.

2007 Update (just in time)

Yet again I've left it practically two months to update the blog, in fact its been a few hints from friends and family that finds me now on the last day of the year trying to quickly bring things up to speed.

Since the last post we had a fantastic weekend when Jen and Fred came to stay, picked up shovels, breakers and barrows and really got stuck in. Many thanks guys for all your help, even the kids got on with breaking up the concrete in the old workshop floor!

November found me finally finishing all the major dig out from the barn, once the concrete and rubble were out, it was a fairly speedy dig down into the soil and clay, using a combination of midi-digger and tipper lorry to cart the spoil out. This ended up another 80 tonnes of dig out. By the end of November and with so much work to be done on the underpinning next door it was now clear that Dave would not be starting our build in the near future I got some of my own lads from work in to do prepare his way.

Under Dave's watchful eye its been a great success, see next post for images. The lads have seemed to enjoy the challenge of something new, all their skills are fairly transferable, and Dave has been holding a masterclass in each of the stages, combined with through to check on everything as its progressed. In the five weeks before Christmas they've finalised the dig out, laid all the brick and millwaste sub-floor, dug footings, poured the concrete (with Dave), laid all the walls to sub-floor height. Sanded the sub-base and sheeted it with the radon barrier/damp proof membrane. Poured the concrete slab (with Dave again doing the cerebral bits) and started the internal walls.