Day 9: The big pour, a splendid slab

Two big trucks, lots of blokes, lots of concrete. All happening.

And all done, looking spiffing. A pity our old slab wasn't done with the same degree of expertise as our neighbour's new one, but the idea of wrecking the tiles and underfloor heating to jackhammer it up and put in a new one was too horrible and too expensive to contemplate.

Day 8: The earth moves...

Much soil removed from neighbour's side, as trenches are dug for his foundations, area levelled for the slab, reo put in place ready for another concrete pour tomorrow. Watch this space for a pic of the two back areas side by side.

Day 7: We have foundations...

Concrete has been poured for our foundations, and we get more of an idea of how much floor space we will gain.
Now they wait until our foundations harden, then come back to do the neighbour's side.
Hopefully warm weather will mean his foundations and slab can be done on Friday.

Meanwhile, the neighbour's back wall came down today - more noise and dust. The excavator came in handy as a demolition platform.
But at least it's all happening, and after three early starts my body clock is starting to adapt to the new up-at-6:30 regime and I've stopped wandering around as though jet-lagged.

Day 6: Work resumes, really

We lurch out of bed before 7 (again), ready to ensure that the new concrete foundations go in the right place, and that no one damages the controls for the underfloor heating, sticking out of the slab.
Builder Dave is trying to reconcile the measurements on various plans to work out where the boundary is between the houses. The result he gets moves our wall much further than we, or our neighbour, were expecting. It seems so unlikely that he decides to wait until he can get the Council Surveyor to check it out before digging the trench.
To our surprise, the calculations are verified. We thought we were going to gain about 100mm (4" in old money), but the actual gain is about 310mm, a bit over a foot. Neighbour is less than happy as he is going to have an unexpected step in the wall on his side, and his new living room will be a little smaller. I take him out for a consoling coffee.
By close of play there is a nice neat trench ready for concreting, but the delay in checking the survey means no pouring. We are bemused to find an ancient pipe running from one property to the other, through the trench. Carrying what? who knows...

Work resumes, almost...

We lurch out of bed before 7, ready to ensure that the new concrete foundations go in the right place, and that no one damages the controls for the underfloor heating, sticking out of the slab.
Concretor is a no show, so nothing happens.
We take the car to be serviced and prowl the streets of Richmond looking at windows, furniture, sinks, taps, range hoods etc. Most of what we like turns out to be at IKEA. Which is good, because their prices are reasonable for well-designed stuff.

Good news, bad news

Good news:
Second soil test confirms that our original test was the incorrect one. We will need much less elaborate footings and the overall price will drop by quite a bit.
Bad news:
We have to have our engineering work re-done, and because our builder had a technical hitch in his communications, he couldn't get the engineer started on the rework for about a week.
Good news:
Builders keep on working until quite late this year, don't knock off until Friday 20 Dec, so there is a slightly greater chance that we will have a roof on by then.
Bad news:
Builders keep on working until quite late this year, don't knock off until Friday 20 Dec, so we won't get to start our summer live-aboard life in Tassie until Sunday 22 December. We're going to fly down on Saturday for a two day visit just to check that Nahani is still there.
Meanwhile:
While we've been away, they've done the plumbing on the next door site, so once we get the reworked engineering specs, the concretor should be able to go ahead with the footings for both projects and the slab for next door.