But first a picture of what our 'new' house will look like. (we hope). (Remember you can enlarge the pictures by clicking on them)
The brown coloured part is our current house and the white coloured part, on the right only, is going the be our addition to our current house. The white underneath our current house is already there just not coloured in. It will give us a lot more space once it is done.
But first things first. After they dug the hole we had nothing but rain. Not all day long but a shower or thunderstorm a day and it was enough for our contractor to say that he could not do anything until the ground dried up a bit. Well we finally had a week of sunny dry weather and the construction would start again on past Tuesday. But of course the weatherman predicted it would rain again on Monday. Leo and I decided we needed to make an umbrella for our 'hole'. This is the result of our umbrella.
A plank here and there to hold up the tarp so the wind could blow underneath.
Try and get it all in the right place. It all took lots of patience and time.
Have to dig a gutter and dike to make sure the water would not run underneath.
But it did not rain so they were able to start with levelling off the ground again on Tuesday.
First we have to use up the gravel they dumped earlier. New gravel is coming as this just was not enough to level all of it.
Pretty scary the way the little bulldozer is working here.
After we dumped some of the gravel we now have to pack it.
Oh is that a truck I hear with more gravel!!!
As you can tell a pretty big truck. Almost too big to get into our driveway.
Here he is dumping the last load of gravel we hope.
More gravel to play with.
Oh the guys are here to make the footings for the foundation but before we do let's clean up the tarp so they can work.
We have to do a bit more packing as well so now it is the helper's turn.
The forms are ready just have to raise them to the right level. Which these days is done with a laser. We sure get to see how things have changed over time and how it is all much easier to do.
But then there still is the old fashioned way of keeping the cement from running out at the bottom. ROCKS!!!
Now we are ready to pour the cement for the footings. But that won't happen until the next day (Wednesday). Unfortunately it rained (poured) overnight but they said it did not matter so the pouring would still happen. Rain or Shine!
6:30 in the morning our cement truck arrived. Beep, beep, beep! Yes it was backing up our driveway at that time. Out with our cameras and video camera to capture more action. This cement truck was not like your usual cement truck with the big rolling drum. It had the gravel and cement in separate containers in the back of the truck and water (tank behind the ladder) gets added on site. It has a little mixer on the back of the truck. We had never seen this before so a new experience again.
Here you see the top of the truck with the 2 compartments for gravel and cement. The truck driver is opening up the water tank.
Out comes the cement into the wheelbarrow. But because of the rain it was not easy to wheel the wheelbarrow around. It took 2 guys to move it.
And then dump it in the forms.
Here is where they put some boards down so it would be a bit easier to wheel it around.
But even that was not easy at times. Notice all the water standing there.
Finally they were able to pour the cement right into the forms. That sure was a lot easier but they did have to help it along with a shovel and by hand as you can see.
Every one hard at work except one? Actually he is working too. He is the cement truck driver and controlling the remote which controls the mixing and the flow of the cement.
Last little bit and we are almost done with the filling of the forms.
Here we use a plank to smooth out the top of this form.
But the boss gets to put the final touches to it all.
Now comes the clean up. First the cement flutes need to be washed off and their shovel as well.
Next are the planks, shovels, trowel and what ever got dirty.
But we are done for today and the footings are in. Now the cement has to dry and the building can start. But before this happens we have to fill the 'hole' in the middle with crushed rock as a foundation for the floor. Our contractor had emailed us to say that this truck would come on Friday but it showed up today so again out came the cameras.
This again was a new experience for us. We had never seen a gravel truck which could 'spit' gravel.
This is the truck ready to go to work.
Truck has a conveyor belt which depending on the speed and the height of the belt can 'spit out' gravel a fair distance. It is all controlled by a remote being operated by the driver of the truck. He told is later that he can even drive the truck back and forth with this remote.
Still spitting away in all corners of the 'hole'.
Just a little left to do and another step done in the construction.
But no job is done without a little BS-ing at the end.
And this is what the mounds of crushed gravel look like close-up. Now all they have to do is remove the forms and spread the rocks to make it all ready for the next step. The walls!!!
Hope you enjoyed this part of the building. It is somewhat longer than I intended but everything happened all at once and starting next Monday the real building is supposed to start, there will be more to post then.