Thursday, November 22, 2007
Floor taking shape
Yesterday in preparation for the gravel delivery this morning I bashed a couple of openings in the walls. A hole for the soil pipes and a hole for the water connection. The man from the water company came for a site survey at the start of this week to discuss adding a new water supply for the house. After a bit of metal detecting he worked out where the water main was and suggested the best place for the water to enter the house. The blue pipe in the photo is the conduit with the plastic water pipe to be connected later. He said it should be 50cm below ground level when it exits the house, so a little more digging outside.
BTW, making holes in these stone walls is a brutal job. In the past I've tried to make a hole just big enough by carefully removing stone or using a hammer and chisel to cut my way through large stones. It isn't worth the hassle. Now I just sledgehammer away from both sides smashing the stone and taking out much much more than you think you need and then repairing the large hole later. In the long run its much quicker and easier.
The lorry with 15 tonnes of gravel/sand mix for the hardcore arrived at 8am and the two of us spent basically the whole day with a wheelbarrow each moving hardcore. By 3pm we had a fairly small pile left and realised that we where short by about 5 tonnes ! I did calculate yesterday that we needed another 3 tonnes but hoped that it might stretch. What I didn't calculate for was that in places I had dug out a little too deep, and surprisingly the hardcore mix actually compressed quite a bit, about 2cm over a 20cm depth. I was going to hire a vibrating compactor next week, but having jumped about on the stuff, I reckon it's going to compress quite a bit.
So tomorrow, at 8am, is another lorry load coming with 7 tonnes (a couple extra just in case).
| 8:54:22 PM
brittany
renovation
Floor taking shape
