Good Bye to the Piling Rig.... Phew!!!

After all the problems we had while they were on site we were very glad to see the back of these guys.....Byeeeee!!

Two Weeks in One Major Problem

You would think that plotting out the site would be not too difficult but when everyone seems to be working from a different angle it's not plain sailing!
One thing that Will and I have always been ultra aware and worried about has been the drain on the East side of the plot and Southern Water's stipulation that any building has to be at least 3 metres from it (leaving a pretty useless strip of land between us and the neighbour on the wrong side of the house) but when Will visited the plot during said plotting out what did he find? Of course, they've marked the house out within the 3 metre restriction area!!
That rectified, the pilers got on with the plotting out and wasted no time before they started drilling ...... unfortunately a little too soon - 3 piles are in the wrong place. All went on hold while we established what had gone wrong and how to put it right. The pile layout was provided by our structural engineer but apparently one coordinate was incorrect, only one mind, but unfortunately the pilers used this coordinate to work from. They could have worked perfectly well from the measurements and then we wouldn't have had a problem but hey ho it's done.
Will & the builders had various calls with the structural engineer and eventually got him to make some calculations and he made some alterations to the ring beam in order to carry the load in the small area of the 3 offending piles. We had a few anxious days but now on to getting on!!

Foundations begin with Piling

We have to have piled foundations due to both the soil type on the plot which is a dense London clay and the sloping nature of the site. This doesn't come cheap so unfortunately a lot of our costs are going deep into the ground never to be seen again. 

We are having 22 piles which support the ring beam on which the house will be built. Our piles have to be friction piles as opposed to bearing piles. Bearing piles are driven down through soft soil until they reach a firm base on which to support the load but friction piles rely on creating friction between the pile and the surrounding soil so the load is transferred downward and laterally into the soil.

Friction Piling

You can see a very big drill bit stuck in the earth here!

The 30mm wide holes are drilled deep into the ground, then a ReBar is sunk into the tunnel like hole which is filled with concrete thus creating an incredibly strong concrete and steel column....... ta da, there's a little lesson and that's as much as I know (and probably will ever need to know) about piling.

It wasn't completely known how deep the piles would have to be until the rig started drilling - in the end the deepest piles are 17 metres deep and shortest 11 metres - our house isn't going anywhere, I'm guessing if we had a landslide we'd still be sitting pretty in our house on stilts!!

We have a portaloo, electricity and water....

and the dog on site.

At vast expense and after numerous phone calls with the utility companies we are connected (though these are only temporary for the duration of the build and then there will be more expense and more phone calls to make them permanent once the house is complete) and the builders have their "restroom".  Ha, I won't be going anywhere near that!

Buddy and I surveying the site - Happy :)

Action at Last!!

Nice neat bit of digging - Second week in October the digger came on site and started plotting out the house... So exciting that something's going on!

Tenders etc

So, what's been going on since my last post? As usual a lot of waiting on the architect!
During the summer they were working on the tender document to send out to builders and my, did it take some time. I know that their job is to get as much information in the document as possible in order for the quotes to be accurate but everything seemed to be incredibly slow.

Apparently it's standard for builders to need 4 weeks to get together their prices so the tenders were sent out to 4 builders and Will & I contacted 3 independently. After a couple of weeks one of the building companies (Hare Builders) requested an extra week - and we stupidly said "OK" so it went on an extra week. The prices were amazingly varied with the highest being Hare, £200k above the bottom two!!
 
During the process we contacted and met with 2 of the architect's builders and one who we contacted directly. For us, we knew that we needed to be able to get on with the contractor and hopefully get a good working relationship going with them, as we had realised by this point, that we would want deal directly with the builder during the build foreseeing problems if we kept the architect in control.

We made our decision on price, of course, but also on personality. It came down to two companies in the end and we chose the company who appear happy to deal direct with us, listen to us and work together with us. They are a very small company but really keen to build something a bit interesting and high spec and concentrate solely on our project. They've quoted a 32 week build which takes us to May next year.... if we're in then we will be SO chuffed!!

Code 3 it is..

Oh my, I'm bad at this blogging lark.  I've just got back on it because at last we have some stuff going on & taking a look at my last post realised that I never concluded that little chapter in the story of our build.
After much pestering by phone & email the council caved & gave us an answer. Yes, we can build to code 3 with the condition that we do everything we said we would in our letter of appeal. That's fine, we're happy!