Tuesday 30th Sep 2008

Building Approval and First Taste of Construction.

Well it’s all happening!! We got building approval 2 weeks ago (16 Sep) which was so much quicker than we expected. In all it took less than 3 weeks. Hooray for Huon Valley Council! And Hooray for us! It was such a tricky process for beginners and we managed to wade our way through the documentation with a small amount of help from a structural engineer and technical drawing advice from Dad. Of course the fact that we can both use AutoCAD and both have construction and design backgrounds came in pretty handy too. So we marked the occasion with celebratory oysters in Franklin and started planning for the next bit.

The next bit just happens to be building a house… Well it started to look pretty daunting to me, so much planning ahead about things I just don’t know the technicalities of. After a small panic attack I realised that the only way to go forward with everyone’s sanity intact (as well as our relationship) is to break it into small bite size pieces and focus only on one bite at a time. This strategy is not going to be the fastest or even the most economical way through it but that’s how it needs to be until I know much more about what I’m doing.

So the first bite was the retaining wall (including footing, which the slab will sit on at one end of the building). Bernt talked me through the construction and materials needed (he is quantity surveyor, I am material sourcer) and I ordered our first lot of materials. So exciting! I never knew that N12 rerod and 20:48 pool block shopping could be such a thrill! We now have an account at the trade desk of our local Mitre 10 and a ‘guy’ who is very enthusiastically helping out with our ordering and hardware needs, which makes me feel very important.

Bernt and I spent the first weekend string lining the location for our first trench then a couple of days later I got a guy with a machine to dig the trench. We had considered hiring the 3 tonne excavator and doing it ourselves but after watching the crazy stunt like manoeuvres the driver did to get into position (like suspending himself over the metre deep trench to get at it) we realised we should leave it to the professionals. And what a beautiful trench! Our soil is very clay-ey so he just carved this beautifully geometric void into it.

This weekend just gone we aligned the trench by hand (or should I say shovel), I had let the digger dig too low on one side of the trench so we had to spend considerable time building a new wall out of MDF and Pine. Then we had to work out how the trench mesh and spacers fit together to form a rigid structure. After a confused phone call to dad and some messing around we worked it out. Bernt set up the ultimate workbench with a view by screwing my vice onto a tree stump in order to bend our rerod starter bars.

 

We left the trench in perfect condition Sunday arvo ready for council inspection and concrete pour the next day. That night it poured down with rain, we kept looking at each other and worrying that the trench was going to flood or seriously cave in. The problem being that the mesh was too long and heavy to be taken out by one person (i.e. me) in order to shovel out any collapsed dirt. I got to the block early the next day to give me time to fix any problems but luckily there was only one very minor cave in (a wallaby digging the earth at the edge), a few stray rocks and some very minor puddles.

The council inspector was very relaxed. He took a couple of photos and was on his way. Then all that was left was to wait for the concrete truck with baited breath. I was a little nervous about the pour for a couple of reasons;

1: I would be on my own for most of it with no one to help if any problems arose,

2: What if we hadn’t ordered enough, or too much?

3: I had to install 36, 1 metre high starter bars into the concrete before it went off (as well as levelling it) these bars had to be at exact spacings and vertical to a string line. Now this didn’t daunt me to begin with (I’ve done a few pretty stressful glue ups in my time at the school of wood). I had figured that I had plenty of time to get them in before it set, but dad seemed pessimistic about me getting them in in time and our neighbour Chris didn’t seem to think we could push the 90 degree angled ends through the mass of concrete.

So I was a bit nervous, but the concrete truck driver was so laid back about it all that it put me at ease. I had arranged that he come at 3:30 so that Bernt would be home from work (hopefully) in time to help with the last minute bits. The concrete was 20 mins late which was great because the likelihood of Bernt getting home in time increased. And thank god because just as the concrete man swung the shoot to the last corner of the trench; the concrete ran out. It looked like we were nearly a metre short. I started madly shovelling from the other side, luckily there were a few high spots that I could push through. Concrete shovelling is hard work and I was starting to really get tired when Bernt drove up the driveway. So thankfully he jumped in and by the end of the shovelling the trench was full, I levelled it up with a float and it was pretty much perfect. Phew!!

Then the nervous task of sticking in the first starter bar. Would it push through the concrete? Would we get all 36 of them in on time?.....   Of course… because we are HEROS!! J It was really quite easy in the end and we had plenty of time before the concrete went off to wiggle them around so they were exactly levelled and spaced. In fact we ended up staying at the block till 8pm in the cold and dark (we set up a little fire) so we could protect the still wet concrete from being trampled by wallabies. We had this idea that one might fall in the trench and push over a starter bar which would then set all wonky. I secretly worried that one might jump through, get its feet caught in the setting concrete and still be there the next day, struggling like a fly stuck to flypaper.

So we survived the first little bite! Concrete footing tick, another thing of beauty! Yay for us! Next bite is the retaining wall.