House Building Diary

Frame construction

Work started this Monday on putting the frame up. We are amazed at how quickly this has progressed.

The pictures below were taken today. It's starting to look more like a house now.

Frame delivered

We drove past our block this morning and saw the frame was being unloaded from a large truck.
This was a nice surprise.

The crane was getting pretty close to the power lines above, but they managed to unload without any problems.

Later in the day the frame had been unpacked and layed out ready to be put up. We could see they had marked out the slab for positioning of the frame.

The work on the storm water drainage started on Monday. The pipework for the drainage was installed and we also arranged for the pipework from the driveway and water tank to be installed at the same time. It was far easier to do this now, at slab stage, rather than wait until the house was built.

We also got the drainage guys to dig out the storm water pit for us seeing as they had their digger there already.

The next day we started putting various things into the pit. First of all a layer of course river sand.

Next the geotextile fabric lined the pit and then the Ausdrain EnviroModules started to be layed.

A total of 72 modules were placed into the pit.

The filteration unit was then installed with the pipework connected to the EnviroModules. An overflow pipe was also connected to the modules. The geotextile fabric was then wrapped over the top of the modules.

Next the rest of the sand was poured around and over the modules and levelled off.

We then hired a mini earth mover to fill in the the pit with the pile of soil.

Here it is finished and levelled off. Glad thats over and done with. Looking forward to seeing the house get built now.

Stormwater pit preparation

We spoke to our plumber yesterday and was told that the storm water pipework would be laid and also the pit would be dug on Friday. As we are installing the Ausdrain EnviroModules ourselves (click blog title for info) we had to organise getting them delivered and also 9 ton of washed course river sand. We phoned around for the best price and have organised for it to be delivered Saturday. Ausdrain were very efficient and able to get the equipment required for the pit delivered the next day (Thursday). We organised for the courier to call us 30 mins before they would arrive at the site with them so we could be there to help unload. Unfortunately we did not receive a call until we found out they had already been and gone back to the depot with them. Great! So we organised to meet them just after 9am. They then didn't show up until 10.30am.

Also got a call from our Site supervisor telling us the rain had put things back and the storm water pit and pipework will now be done on Monday. So we've had to rebook the sand to be delivered on Tuesday as it will be in the way otherwise. Looking at the weather forecast things aren't looking good for Monday or Tuesday so it could be put back again. It's a shame as the frame was due to be delivered Tuesday, but this will have to be put back now.

Well at least we managed to get the EnviroModules assembled ready to put in the storm water pit, even if it did rain a lot of the time. There basically 72 glorified milk crates.

Slab finished

We now have a slab! The concrete was poured for the slab on Monday. Luckily the weather stayed dry for the next 2 days allowing it to set.

Steel mesh & Waffle pods

Went past our site today and saw that the formwork had been done for the slab. The Waffle pods and steel mesh were also in place ready for the concrete to be poured.

It's nice to see things starting to take shape. It doesn't look as big as we imagined at the moment, but it probably will once the house starts to go up.

An inspection needs to be done first before the concrete is poured for the slab.

Piering

The piering was done today. Around 50 or so round holes were dug roughly 700mm deep. The depth of each hole varied depending on how firm the soil was in each spot.

As this was a provisional cost, it can vary as to how much concrete is required to fill the holes. Ours was estimated to be 35 lineal metres but ended up being 45 lineal metres. Our site supervisor told us we had been lucky, as other sites he had worked on had required as much as 50 lineal metres more than estimated.