Monday 22 July

Its Stopped Raining

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Haven’t updated the blog as we have been busy with long days and home to the van in the dark and too tired to blog.

None-the-less the dry weather as allowed us to move ahead with a number of things which we can do prior to submitting in the BA.

So since last entry we have:

- Built a temporary driveway crossing from the street to the front gate, which entailed earthwork and tucking in gravel;

- Cut down some trees which shouldn’t be there (according to Cheryl, our garden consultant) and taken them to the tip;

- Cleaned up around the creek and pond with a whipper snipper, and cleared under the Morton Bay Fig;

- Returned from a dump trip with a trailer load of mulch to spread under the fig tree;

- Planted about a dozen trees/shrubs Cheryl (our garden consultant) had bought around to start the screening off of our closest neighbour;

- Excavated around the SW corner of the Guest Bedroom so we can lay the electrical cable and power box, which will be installed tomorrow, Tuesday;

- Excavated a suitable flat space which will run all the way along the street side of the house wall, required to prevent future water ingress once the walls are built;

and...

- still excavating and levelling the temporary site for the van, container and tanks.

Following are images and captions explaining some of these tasks:

Before you see the images below its inserting to note this picture.   This is a driveway up the road form where we are temporarily staying.  We drove passed this driveway the day a guy was unloading an excavator, and this is what it looked like the afternoon we drove back. Its about 75m long.  The effort below to do 5m took me three days :)

First stage of our crossing excavating dirt from the gutter to gate.

The final dirt work down (2 days later) looking towards the gate.

Adding the Geofabric to stop the gravel getting pushed into the dirt by vehicular traffic.

Getting a load of 75mm+ base layer.

Here you can see the ute being filled with 3/4 ton of the 40+ crushed concrete; we did four trips all up, and will do a few more to top the driveway off with 20mm once the first lot has settled and has been compacted by driving the ute repeatedly over it in the following days.

This is the trench I dug from the green box on the street boundary on the way to the corner of the Guest Bedroom where the meter will eventually be placed.  In the mean time a temp. power box will be at the end of this trench.  Now I know it's not straight, but feeling safe in the BX on a slope (sloping two wats, across and down was not entirely enjoyable.  Subsequently I deviated to reduce the list on the tractor as I dug away.  The electrician says its fine BTW.

Now this is the meter box end of the trench, well nearly, still about 4m to go, which I dug from the bottom. 

Now you may wonder why the big excavation in the foreground?  The issue here is the power line needs to be 600 or more below grade when the build is finished.  As the guest room will have a floor level roughly where the base of this bigger cut is, means the electrical trench needed to be 600 below that, otherwise we'd dig up the lines when excavating for the floor slab, or have to pay for them to be reburied deeper later on.

Now this shot above, shows a different excavator is one owned by our neighbour Paul, who we also bought the land off.  He has all sorts of toys, probably bought with the money from the sale :).  He saw me digging away with Mr. Mitarai and asked what I was doing, which I explained.  He then offered to use he's bigger Kubota to cut away the slope further along form the cable trench, to the floor level we'll need subsequently.  I had just cut enough space to deal with the above problem, not started a full floor level excavation.   Paul extended the cut near the electrical trench and started cutting back where the next room, the garage will go.  I'll take a more wider image for the next entry that puts this all in perspective.  How lucky are we with one neighbour still doing construction work and the other a former heavy machine operator and mechanic.

BTW Paul let me have a play with his Kubota, and what a tool.  Its so quiet (uses a common rail diesel), is so powerful, has a big bucket, possi tracks and 360 swivel cab.  A superior tool but at 3 times the price (2nd hand)

These last two weeks have demonstrated what value the ute, trailer and tractor have been!  And I can move them on once finished, and get some return back.  Just digging the electric cable trench saved me over $1000.  Plus Paul and Frank's assistance is awesome and valuable.