Still drying out

My trenches are still drying out. Some of the ones located deeper (>2m) are clay and are very mushy. It is incredible to think that my deepest excavation is 2.7m below ground level.

I tried in vain to contract the council on Friday about the pour for the piers. They rang back on Monday and I fessed up that they have been poured. I explained that Sydney Water had inspected them. They just want photos and a copy of Sydney Water's report.



The rear excavation was really starting to fail, the enbankment was starting to collapse much like you see waves eroding a sand bank on a beach. Whole chunks were falling into to trench. I immediately executed my emergency plan which is to do more shoring. I tied the timber posts back to star pickets about three metres away. That seemed to arrest the collapse.



I have removed some of the form work for the piers.

I cut the formwork away with a jig saw after slightly raising it. I used a crow bar to remove the blocks of wood from the sides of the pier liners.

Rain - Flooding

It rained heavily today. It is terrible working in the rain. It slows me down and welding is more difficult.

I wired up some of the re-inforcing. You can see that the pier hole is completely flooded...

It didn't rain today!

It didn't rain today - yay!!!! I pretty much completed all the forms and bent some rebar for the columns. I'm storing the rebar in my toilet... I'm still waiting on steel - maybe the 10th?

I ended up re-inforcing the dogy ply with some proper 17mm form ply. I used a jigsaw to cut the holes - much quicker and easier.

Water Spouts

It was another wet day yesterday. I didn't get much done and gave up around lunch time. According to the weather bureau, there were water spouts making land fall. I copped at 12mm of rain and it kind of flooded my excavation.

The rain caused some interesting erosion....

I excavated some of the sewer pipe - it will need to be shorten a little bit. At the moment it sits where the foundation is going to be.

Today I also basically finished putting up my markers for the layout of the building.

Rain, rain, rain

It has being raining continuously since Tuesday. My spy has being telling me everything is OK :)

There was 80mm of rain collected in my bucket since last Tuesday.

I turned up today and everything seemed to be OK. The cheap ply wood has started to delaminate, but it should be OK for another couple of months or so.

You can see the weak sandstone seam in the first photo. The iron content makes it a bit red.



I drove my ute into the excavation to unload a site box with no dramas. The ute wheels didn't sink much at all. You could see the tire marks, but they were very shallow - maybe 5mm.

My stockpile of sand has started to erode - sigh.