I've posted nothing here since April 24th. This is why. The build staggered to a halt for 6 1/2 weeks from the end of April while the architect, structural engineer, and the contractor had a good old wrangle and the basement part of the build had to be re-designed It's been quite difficult to get to the bottom of it all but the gist is that the structural engineer blamed the architect for 'inaccurate' drawings, and also blamed the contractor for not following the dig instructions; the architect blamed the engineer for not checking his (the architect) drawings before designing the basement, as he should have done, because the architect is not an engineer, and professionals are supposed to check each other's work at every stage; the contractor blamed the both the engineer and the architect, for what, I'm not entirely sure. So, rather a lot of buck passing was involved, and I ended up having to pay for it all. This involved more fees for the architect and for the engineer, and for the contractor who needed a great deal more concrete in order to make the basement walls thicker than were designed originally. From my point of view, I blame inadequate communication between all the 'professionals' involved. Ha! they never tell you about this sort of thing on 'Grand Designs'. I gather it's quite common for this to happen during a construction project.
Not surprisingly I didn't feel much like writing up the blog while all this was going on. Anyway, after all that was settled, the form workers came in at the start of August to actually form the (newly designed) basement. They worked extremely well and efficiently and were done in less than three weeks. Then the carpenters arrived to start the above ground timber framework. Sadly, after a week this all ground to a halt because they need information from the architect, or his assistant , but as they are both on holiday, nothing more can be progressed before they return. However, I'm getting fairly used to delays now, and feel pretty sanguine about this one.
A time lapse camera is in place (in the loft room on a tall tripod) to record the work, but it only appears to work intermittently and it's difficult to understand why. But, no great loss as progress has been so slow. However, I hope to get it sorted out now that the build has at last started to get out of the ground .
In the meantime, here's some photos. It has to be said that these are not the most exciting or interesting images in the world, except to those people closely involved, those who are planning their own house build, or nerdy house construction fans, of which there might be a considerable community out there. Who knows?
Installing shuttering for the concrete pour.
All shuttered and ready for the Big Pour.
The concrete truck arrives and the pour is ready to start.
The pouring process was quite exciting. It was a fairly difficult job in such a very
confined site, and on a boiling hot day too. The formwork team usually work on
very large sites, including some of those famous double height London basements,
so I think they were a bit sniffy about my tiny basement job.
.
The finished job. This will be the ground floor. The basement floor is below this, beneath the temporary board that can be seen with lengths of timber lying on it. At the nearest end of the photo is the very small 'garden'. The compost 'rescued' from the vegetable garden that was here before the dig began , has all gone and been replaced by concrete. I had no idea that the entire space would have to be dug out and replaced by concrete because of the need to have whacking thick concrete walls to stop everything surrounding them from collapsing. Having now said a sad goodbye to the old space and got used to the idea of not being able to save anything that it had previously contained I've now accepted the inevitable. I'm going to have to be very imaginative in terms of creating a garden in such a tiny space. Holes will be drilled into the concrete base for drainage, so there will be a fairly large planter next to the seating area, and there are deep planters along two of the walls. It will be mostly a vertical garden, but I think it'll look good. I'm already planning a planting scheme,
Here come the carpenters starting to install the timber for the rest of the build.
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