July 2007

This month saw the real fun start on the extension to the main house!

By the first of the month, the decks had been cleared and everything agreed with building control ready to start on the foundations to the part single part double story extension. The picture shows the prepared area where the extension will sit.

Notice the mud in the picture? As you can perhaps tell from the previous blog, the weather had not got any better and it was still very wet. But, none the less, the builders started digging the trenches for the foundations down to 2.4m as requested by building control using a special excavator with a long reach (i.e. 3.0m down).

In so doing, the builders uncover the rainwater sewer serving the 20-30 houses in the remainder of the row of houses running right across the back of the house.

They decide to break through the clay pipe and rejoin with a piece of UPVC pipe and appropriate clay-UPVC soil pipe joins. As this allows them to use the excavator rather than to dig round it manually.

But on the same day, the 3rd of July, the heavens opened with what can only be described as a torrent of water at about 5 o'clock in the evening. This deposits a massive amount of water in the area, a large amount of which flowed down the pipe the builders had been working on. Unfortunately, they did not know that they had factured the clay rain water pipe away from the joins at both ends that they had joined. Under the pressure of the rain water in the pipe the pipe was leaking and a stream of water was leaking out into the foundations.

No major problem you would think?

But you would be wrong. This eroded the walls of the foundation trenches and, as they were 2.4m deep, it also started to erode the soil from underneath the back of the house! (as the existing foundations were only 1.0m deep)

So, despite having a pump going permanently, I could not stem the flow and more of the soil fell into the trenches making things more and more hazardous. Eventually, the builders were called back to site at 11pm to try and resolve the problem. We worked through the night to repair the pipe again (further down the existing clay pipe at both ends) and eventually the rain also relented, which meant the builders could leave the site at about 3am the following morning.

By 8am that morning, the foundation trenches looked like this and that is after having a pump running continually to pump out the water that was already in the trenches which were at one time overflowing with rain water.

The 600mm wide trench turned into a massive hole in the ground 3m x 3m in diameter and 2.4m in depth. Over half of which was full of water - and becoming a major health and safety hazard!

We now had to battle the weather so, the foundations spent most of their time under cover from that point on! But still it continued to rain and the pumps kept pumping! trying to keep the water out of the foundations.

However, this time they were reinforced with boards to ensure that they stayed in place (as much as possible), and that the health and safety of the builders was assured whilst down in the trenches deeper than they were tall.

8 skips loads of soil pass by!

Eventually the Council's building control department confirms they are happy with the depth and width of the foundations and then we were off again with the next stage.

On a really sunny and warm day in mid July, the concrete lorries turned up carrying all 26 cubic meters of concrete needed for the first part of the foundation. To give some indication, this took 4 lorries the size of motorway maintenance vehicles, plus another lorry capable of pumping the concrete to the back of the house. It caused chaos on the road outside the house as it was effectively blocked for a period of time as well as the picutres below show!

But the concrete was flowing! (thank god!) and the

nightmare of the main foundations would soon be over!

That said, further work was necessary to join the new foundation to the existing house foundation. This involved digging a section for 1m x 1m x 2.4m deep under the wall of the existing house! Before, once again, it was inspected by the local building control officers and more concrete was used to fill it back up again

But this completed most of the excitment for July! By the end of it, whatever little amount of hair I had, had completely disappeared with the stress and worry!