The Great Wall of Bitterne

Things are moving on nicely (as in, no more major disasters to report). Our retaining wall is going up, and we've had no more landslides.  Unfortunately the rain has continued.... every blinkin' day! As my builder said, "..on a job like this you just have to have rain" I think that means he is enjoying himself.

Anyway, here's one of the wall - 4 courses done on Monday.

The Wall consists of two rows of concrete blocks, with a gap in between them

for the steel reinforcements, then the gap is filled with concrete. Its 40cm wide.  

I don't have any bus references for you, but it's a lot of concrete.

Work continues, this on Wednesday, going up to 8 courses.

The next picture is of a rather special brick

My Dad found this beauty on ebay.

- I guess it makes a bit more sense if you know we live on Braeside Close.

So we just had to squeeze it into The Wall.

(Hoping for a small discount from the Builders for supplying materials)

Special brick cemented in place in its new home

for many years to come (landslides permitting).

When I got home from work today the builders had re-discovered the concrete footings for the extension. They had been buried under the landslide mud... so its nice to see them again :)

Tomorrow, they plan to start building on these footings in preparation for the block and beam floor. Yes, thats right - A floor!!! 

Lets hope my life (& my house) will soon feature slightly less mud. 

Landslide

So I couldn't bring myself to blog about the landslide at the time, it was simply terrifying to find out that after heavy rain all day on Thursday about 6 tonnes of soil simply fell from the bank.  That's equivalent to a double decker bus just plummeting into you back garden. Bad Times.

This pic is the pile of mud that slipped. 

Underneath that mud is meshed cage of steel-work that the builders had spent all day fixing in place for the next concrete pour which was due on Friday.  It was crushed.  :(

So, Friday morning the builders arrived bright and early to shift the double decker bus and check the state of the steel-work.  They had to remove and re-lay a big section of it.

Some squashed steel after the landslide

Friday afternoon, I left work early to get home just in time for the second concrete pour; Big crane with a Big pump, Big lorry full of concrete and a Big grab lorry picking up mud all at the same time...Lorry-tastic! Things were looking up.

A bit of reinforced steel

More steel

Concrete goes in! (22 tonnes today) 

This will be the slab

 that supports the retaining wall.

Finishing off the concrete...
Incidentally, can you notice whats missing?
That's right... the extension foundations...
They were buried with the mud from the  landslide.

So, a challenging few days, but at the end of week one, we have had 140 ish tonnes of mud taken out, and 50 tonnes of concrete put in. In double decker buses that's 23 buses out and just over 8 in.  And the really good news of the week was that the building inspector turned up moments before the landslip and signed of our extension foundations. Hooray!

Bring on week two!

how to fill a hole with concrete:

Another average day on site...

After waking up to no landslides in the back garden, and the rest of Bitterne exactly where it should be I was feeling positive. Relatively.

Today was 'concrete day'.

Take a look...

small road block

small ish crane

The steel is in place ready to tie into more steel for the retaining wall.
The concrete has started to go off, and so far, both cats have managed to avoid getting stuck...

errr... bad to worse?

Or am I being too negative?

The builders have tried to dig the trenches for concrete foundations, but the trench walls started to fall in on themselves and fill with water - never a good sign apparently. So they have used shuttering to stabilise them as much as possible.  The building inspector has been round and immediately sought advice from her supervisor (eek - another bad sign). He came to have a look and shrugged a bit, saying this is the worst possible part of Southampton (or the world) to dig foundations in, the builder muttered something like ...'I wish I knew that a few weeks ago..grumble grumble' -as another one of his apprentices disappeared down the road in a clay landslide...

anyway, some photos..

Murphy mutters under his breath... "now,  I wouldn't have done it like that..."

Oh, and the builders dug through the mains electricity cable to the house. Most likely to distract from the less-than-good situation out the back. 

If we avoid the seriously 50:50 risk of land slippage overnight, and the trenches don't fall in on themselves, the water will be pumped out and then a few tonnes of concrete will be pumped from a crane, over the house, and into the back garden tomorrow.


Now, what could possibly go wrong with that?

Mud Anyone?

A fair bit of mud came out of the ground today. 3 grab lorries taking about 18 tonnes each. There's quite a bit outside the front of the house to go tomorrow (about 100 tonnes ish) it makes a nice feature as you drive up to the house, kind of mountainous.  It makes the Close seem a bit less urban and more, well, muddy.

I looked at the back of the house and I nearly fell over. It's almost too scary to describe (that's because I live here. You don't live here so it's not scary to you at all).

Swimming pool. Cliff face. Mud slide. These are the three terms I would use to describe what I saw.

Todays pictures...

Think the builders tried to hide the mud behind the wheelie bin... #Fail

Yeah, anyway, I'm sure all the mud will be gone tomorrow.........

Digger!

Things you don't expect to see when you look through the window in the hall...

The dumper truck outside the front door

Digger trying to look conspicuous!

A few tonnes of earth have been moved to the back of our garden -

one day in the future we will make this into a raised deck

A well earned tea break for me!

Surprise! The builders are here!

I got home from work on Thursday to find this lot in the garden...

(not the cat, she was already there)

This is a pic of our access (diggers can climb steps can't they?)

The hedge that we had to 'trim' 

I promise the next post will contain diggers....

Trial pits (and water features)

So to suss out our ground conditions we dug (and dug and dug) a trial pit.
We found thick, heavy sticky clay & managed a trial hole about 70cm deep...

The next day, we had a water feature:

The builders then came round and showed us how to dig a real trial pit:

A 1.5m deep puddle (over the course of 7 days the hole was half full of water)
Perfect for catching naughty cats!

So our ground conditions are a bit iffy.  No sign of any bedrock, just this orangey clay which goes on and on.  There's a high water content, but given our proximity to the river Itchen thats no big surprise.
Having considered piled foundations, we have been reassured that standard strip foundations will be sufficient, probably at about 1.2-1.4m deep.

Next post will contain diggers!!!