With winter well underway, it’s time for another update. Since the last blog post, quite a lots has happened. Format has poured the slab and hence our house is taking shape. I really do feel for the folks who poured the slab. I went up there and saw it taking place. The day was an absolute shocker! 8 degrees, 33 mm of rain fell, and it hailed! The poor buggers!. Having said that they did a good job. The slab, looks great, it’s pretty level – the best they could do in the weather. There’s a little bit of pitting due to the rain but nothing to cause concern.
Format’s next step was delivery of the steel frame. Sadly the weather has not played well. Between the slab being poured and the steel being delivered there’s been the wettest July in 13 years. Over 80mm! This has played havoc with both our driveway and also with Format’s delivery of the steel. The problem came down to the ability of a semi to turn at the end of the access track. Sadly the water made it impossible for a truck to turn. Added to Format changing the delivery date from one where there had been 5 days of fine weather to one where there had been 20mm of rain. Hence a crane was needed – At our cost 🙁 At least now the steel frame is ready to go up. Sadly it’s still too wet around the edges of the house for a bobcat to clean up and lay some more rubble (even though the rubble has been delivered).
On the non format side of things we have quite a few other things on the go. Our rain water tanks have been installed! 3 tanks at 23650 litres each! The base for these took quite a while to prepare. 12 tonnes of dolamite sand was used to level up the area and also to provide a solid base for the tanks. After all it’s 1tonne per 1000 litres of water. Hence that’s a total of 72 tonnes we have in an area of 14 metres by 4 meters. We certainly don’t want them to move!
With the tanks delivered (Many thanks to John, Phil, Ross, Drew and Andrew for their help), it was now time for the shed to be put up. We need the shed up to both help catch water and also to give us somewhere to store things on the block – something that has proved very difficult – It’s really annoying when you have lots of tools but can’t use them as they are all packed.
So the base of the shed has now been prepared (18 tonnes of rubble – all shifted and leveled by hand). The holes for the frame have been dug and the shed is set to go up on Thursday. So it’s all underway. We can’t wait to get in to the house and every little delay is really annoying there, but it’s getting there and we know it’s worth the wait.
