Thursday, April 30, 2009

Ready Set Go!

I spoke to the assessing officer the other day and fortunately there is no initial site inspection anymore - yay! The first inspection is excavation/steel or just before the concrete pour. I'm pretty happy about that since it has saved me a $275 inspection fee, a day off work and probably a week delay.

Liz goes in tomorrow to collect the construction certificate and I officially start on Monday or Friday for insurance purposes.

Probably the most difficult / non standard thing I am doing is a bulk excavation down to a max of 1.8m. It is sand so I have to do some shoring. I've done research and I can safely say that most builders won't do it and it can be expensive. Fortunately I have saved many timbers from the roof and floor. I plan on using those, together with plywood, to shore up the excavation. The first step is to dig a trench border to the excavation. Next I will be drilling, using a hand auger, holes 1 -1.5m deep at the bottom of the trench for many posts. Then I will lower plywood sheets between the posts and the soil. I'll be putting holes in the plywood to reduce the hydro static pressure. From my calcs, it should all be ok. I'll be spending around 2K on the shoring so it is not cheap. Fortunately at the deepest points there are trees with roots to hold the soil together.

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