Digging the foundations
I spray painted the location of the foundations on the ground.
It looks quite big to me compared to the size of the old garage!
Unfortunately, the foundations had to be dug by hand and my bricklayers, Michael and Jason (JM brickwork) were delayed by a couple of days so I thought I'd jump in and start digging myself.
The long trench was soon dug. My house is cut out of the side of a
hill and there is only about 3" of topsoil over the top of compacted
sand subsoil. This means the trenches do not have to be that deep.
I started digging the long trench and put mesh over it at night to prevent accidents.
Again, it did not take too long to dig.
Those damn roots soon came into view!
All I had to do now was to dig the front trench which required a lot concrete breakup.
Done!
I had to put in some shuttering where I was going to bridge the roots. All this only took a couple of days.
For Building Control I had to create a structural surveyer report for the two 6M long steels I was going to need for the build. When I went to see the actual manufactured steels I had the shock of my life!
They seemed so BIG and heavy and way OOT for a small garage. Howver, I guess structural engineers always over specify as it's in their nature!
The second steel.
The spoil heap was not too big but I had to get permission from
the council arborist to put it next to the TPOed tree as I had no other
place to put it.
