Thursday, October 07, 2004
Still digging
Digger man didn't turn up yesterday. Today he needed to excavate in the 'lean-to' where the rising mail and water meter are located. Up until now we had the main water pipe to the house and gites strung across the floor and he was digging round it. Not possible today, so I had to disconnect the pipework at the meter. Whilst my pipework was dangling freely I decided to dig around the water pipe where exited through the barn wall. At the moment there is a joint inside the barn, which if left would be under the floor inside the new gites. Not a very good idea. So I've dug an 'inspection hatch' just outside, inserted some conduit in the wall, and pulled the pipe through to make the joint outside.
At the end of the day the foreman arrived with his laser level to check the depth of the excavation. In order to get the floor as low as we wanted it would have meant excavating under the foundations of the 'lean to'. The main barn was OK, just the side building had shallow foundations. The digger man had removed about half-a-meter of spoil throughout, and stopped because of the problem. The easiest, and cheapest, solution was to stop where we were, 20cm short of the proposed level. Our main ground floor was going to be slightly higher, meaning a step outside, but the on the plus side the staircases would be shorter and cheaper.
You can see in the photo our water pipe reconnected at the end of the day. The pipe exits the barn just in front of the digger bucket with the rising main behind the camera in the lean-to. Hopefully after the excavation it's not leaning any further than it should.
| 7:08:05 PM
Still digging
