Week 2 - Bricks, Pipes and Dirt

Week Two 24 - 28 Sep

The plan for this week was blocks and pipes and its certainly all happening.

Day 3 - On Monday the guys came out to put up the safety fences - much to the disgust of my charming kids who thought it would be very funny if someone walked off the top of the hill straight down into the big hole.  I think they regretted the comment as they got a lesson all about OH&S!!

The rest of the estate is moving along too.    The house two down from us (image below) should have its roof soon and there are four more houses at the bottom of the hill that are well underway, two already have roofs and the other two have had their slabs laid. 

One of the two vacant blocks across from us has started too and are at about the same stage we are. The white one you can see in the image below is an owner builder and will probably be finished first.  I pity them really having to negotiate with all the trucks when the last seven blocks in the street start.  With any luck those blocks should be past the "big truck" stage by the time we move in.

Day 4 - Our neighbours on the downside of the block are away at the moment and their mum was worried about the dirt slowing down their building plans.  Fortunately I had already spoken to their builder and he was not in the slightest bit worried about the dirt and actually said that he would possibly take some off our hands as he was likely to need fill, So that will work out well.  If I do have some left over I have found a couple of sites to try to get rid of it hopefully at nil cost:

Land Fill Register

Fill Wanted

I want to do the right thing by my neighbours first so they will get first dibs but after that I will list it on these sites and offer it to locals who have indicated they want it.

Day 5 - On Wednesday the block guys turned up - unfortunately the blocks didn't.  A bit of prepping and pipework was done but that was it. 

Day 6 and 7 - Got out to the block at 6am, the block guys were there again but still no blocks.  My poor site manager was frantically on the phone to the block company and they told him the guy was on the road but stuck in traffic.  We suspected it was a lie - and it was - the road he was supposedly stuck on was the one I take to work and it had hardly any traffic on it in either direction, but the blocks did arrive about 20 mins after I left and when I went back that night we had a couple of lovely block walls!

Week 1 - There's A Hole On Our Block....

Week One 20-21 Sep

Cut and Footings

Its very exciting in two days we have a very large hole in the ground, the makings of a driveway and even some concrete footings.

This image is how the cut is being done on the block.  The blue dotted lines are the retaining walls that will be built next week and the red ones are ones that we will build later.  I have also included the neighbours position.  The vest view from our verandah is to the N / NW so our neighbours so we should have a pretty unobstructed view.

Before the block was cut it was a gentle slope from east to west but quite a severe drop from south to north. 

The next view is looking up the block from the covenant area to the north.  The block will basically two flat areas and then slope down to the rear boundary.  The driveway slopes down the west side of the block.

You can see this more clearly in the 2nd image.   The stepin the middle is to support the retaining wall which holds the top slab.

Day 1 - the cut begins at 6am.   They removed about 100m3 of soil.  The site manager has two other properties on the estate just a couple of blocks from ours further down the hill that are probably going to need fill.  With any luck he is going to be able to arrange to move it down to those blocks which should make the cost to us considerably less for the removal.  If you are building on a slope just be aware that in most contracts the cost of bringing in or removing fill is usually additional to the contract price.  Fortunately we were clear on this point beforehand but our site manager said they have a lot of clients who do not realise it.

Day 2 - the cut is finished and the first footings are poured.