ollibees

Foundations’ fundamentals

• By Julia Pankratova
• 2013, 3 July
• 6 Comments

We are solidly in the ground at last, as of last weekend! All remaining footings have been dug, backfilled with concrete, and remaining concrete slabs laid, which completes all our foundations!

UK building regulations like to overcomplicate things… There are numerous types of foundations that must be had depending on the type of soil, sloppiness of the ground, proximity to large trees and so one. Strip, trenchfill, raft, piled, pad… you name it. We were prescribed the counter-lever type. The one, of course,  that had to be one of the more complex ones due to the fact that we have a 5ft retaining wall, even though we are sitting on solid chalk… In short, it meant digging a meter into the ground for the footings, and use a combination of concrete, rubble and more concrete to get it to a nice level of… – what it used to be the original level before we had started digging! 😛

The house retaining wall is gradually growing, being backfilled with concrete. This will ensure the neighbour’s house will not slide on top of us should the deluge come (we started building an Ark too just in case… it’s going to be stored at the BN  premises (Tom does not know about it yet!)). The 1m high x 4m long not-part-of-the-house retaining wall was build by Malc & me last Saturday with heavy concrete blocks laid flat… It took a while… I never knew I could get frustrated by a concrete block… I do now… I learnt pointing that day too.

Did I mention laying a waterproof membrane…? As Malc rightly put it – it’s like wrapping a Christmas present with a giant cello tape!!! It’s big, it’s heavy, it sticks to everything it shouldn’t, yet doesn’t stick to anything it should! The objective is to make the house waterproof at the ground level (in our case, a meter high, due to the retaining wall). The process is rather boring, with  gloopy, black mess (I think they call it “sheet seal primer”) smeared all over the walls where the membrane needs to go, unsticking the membrane from brown paper and then trying to stick the membrane evenly onto the painted walls whilst it’s wriggling and flip-flopping its way all over the place, sticking heavily to fingers and onto itself yet not to the wall!… One gets covered in the black gloopy mess all over, – and the stuff does not come off easily! The process is endless too, as there are multiple layers involved. It’s definitely a two-man job. Malc & I managed to figure out the easiest way to lay the membrane last weekend and managed to cover up a 6m-long area in less than an hour, only to find out that the 4 trades we are hiring had been struggling with a 4m section for over 3 hours! UK building regulations (as well as the manufactures and suppliers) must have been wetting themselves when prescribing this particular method as part of the water-course-proofing process…

Malc’s pillowcase is getting browner every night whenever he manages somehow to get the black gloppy stuff into his hair during the day!…  I refuse us doing a daily laundry – we must look after the environment :). The stuff is not cheap either, yet I am sure it’s promoted by the manufacturers as the next best thing…

Back garden landscaping reached a point now where it will take no more excavated chalk. We managed to build a substantially large  flat terrace below the railway-slipper flower beds. This will eventually be seeded with grass for a nice green lash lawn. We already can hear “petanque” calling us from Summer 2014!

Our first new chimney is getting higher and higher with every added layer of bricks on the gable. We are half-way there! In the meantime our vandal-labourer-Josh enjoys demolishing our old external wall and chimney in order to open up the living room to its new extended size. The aim is to lift all the old concrete roof tiles off the half the house we are currently working on, so we can start replacing the rafters in the roof, pitching up the roof higher. Luckily, we have been blessed with some blue skies and hot weather for the next few weeks (I hope), so should work right into our hand!

I am back in the office this week after a weekend-week-weekend away dedicating my leisure time to the building site, aka the house. I am sure by now my bruises, grazes, cuts, stained finger nails and my dull hair and skin, soaked in cement dust, gave me away. I seem to have developed a mild allergy to all the (builders?) dust too, which is now affecting my breathing, and which does not seem to be helped by the daily hovering, floor cleaning and dusting :(.   This cannot be a good reason to be back in the office!!!!

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Malc just came up with a great idea – we will call our house “Ollibees” when it’s all finished 🙂