Day 31 - Carpenter No Show

The only progress on the block today

Day 30 - Termite Guard and More Deliveries

Yesterday morning I drove past the block on my way to work. I was hoping that I would see carpenters, but   realistically didn't think that they would be there seeing the termite mesh had not been installed.

On my way back from work, I went past again and not only had the termite mesh been installed but there had been more deliveries.

 More framing materials

Windows

Today carpenters should be on site starting the lower frames. The temperature today is forcasted at 35 - 41 degrees today, so I am glad it is not me working out in the hot sun.

Day 29 - Lower Frames

This morning I drove past the block and noticed that a skip bin had been delivered. That made me smile as the concretors were not the cleanest bunch and left all of their food scraps and rubbish over the front of the block. I was itching to give it a clean.

I rung our trusty SS to find out what was happening next. He said termite treatment would be today, sediment control fence and the remaining temporary fencing would be installed and the lower frames to be delivered.

I went past just after lunch and the temporary fence had been finished off and the sediment control fence was being installed.

This afternoon we went back to check what had happened

No termite treatment - or not what we can see anyway, frames and steels had been delivered.

Sediment control fence

Skip bin after we had cleared up some of the site. It was empty before we started and there is still more to clean up

Day 28 - Completed Slab

Yesterday I was excited to get to the block to see the completed slab.  I was not disappointed.

It is starting to feel like it is big enough to be the ground floor of the house. 

Day 28 - SLAB DAY

I have been worried the last couple of days that the weather would ruin my slab pour today. I have constantly been checking the weather app on my phone hoping that it would change to say that we were going to have perfect sun - about 25 degrees would be perfect, but no, it says

Actually it has changed from the weather this morning - it was 10mm - 20mm and thunderstorms from midday. I wasn't hopeful this morning when I woke up, but thankfully it was blue skies.

I quickly got the kids ready for daycare this morning and we arrived at the block just before 7:00am. Usually when we order concrete for a slab at work, we order the pump for 6:30am and the first concrete truck for 7:00am.  When we arrived, the concrete pump was there, the concrete truck was there, but no concretors.

The concretors come from nearly an hour away, but turned up not too much after 7:00am. Firstly there was a clean of the boom pump lines and then it was pour time.

As we were leaving the second concrete truck arrived. There is about 50m3 of concrete in the slab, so there will be about 9 or 10 concrete trucks today.

I am excited to see what it looks like this afternoon when I get home from work.

Day 24 - Day 3 Slab Form

The slab form has finally been finished. It was a short day for the concretors yesterday and we knew when we drove past in the morning that they would not have a full day of work when there was a surfboard on the roof of a car.  Don't you love an early Friday finish.

Alfresco

Trench for the upstairs balcony

I am not sure when they are coming back to complete the slab. Either Monday or Tuesday. I am hoping for Monday.

Day 23 - Slab Form

Day 2 of the slab form.

I think it is starting to look a lot bigger - do you agree?

Day 22 - Slab Form

Yesterday was the first day of the forming of the slab.  I thought that we were going to have two days of formwork and then the third day would be the pour. I have since been advised by the concretors that due to the size and the weight of our slab it will take three days to form.

Yesterday we arrived at the block around 11am. They had already formed quite a bit up. As soon as we got there, a truck showed up much to Harry's delight to drop of the padding for the slab

Waffle pods had already been delivered

We left them to it - I am sure they don't appreciate an audience and this is what we came back to in the afternoon.

The pipes in the foreground are for the 5th bedroom ensuite.  The pipes in the middle of the photo is for the laundry.

Height of the slab - it is going to be really thick. Right hand side of picture, you can see the step down of the formwork. This is where the alfresco area joins the house.

Main bedroom balcony footings

The pipework in the back left hand side of the photo is for the kitchen.

Looking directly at the garage - formwork off to the right (in the middle of the photo) is for the water tank.  The pipe work in the middle left of the photo is for the downstairs powder room

Looking from the front porch to the back of the house.

Do you think the slab looks bigger than it did yesterday?

Day 21 - Plumbing

It was plumbing day today. I honestly did not think that they would show up as it was raining when I left for work.

Mat is on nights this week, so luckily he could go out to site and meet with the plumbers to work out where the stormwater and septic pipes were going to go.

The easement is at the back of the block, which is 66 metres from the house. We were not given a fixed price for this in our contract as Rawson was unsure of the site conditions, so we wanted the most direct route that we could get to save money. We also wanted to avoid the area where we eventually want the pool.

We managed to get the most direct route, but didn't avoid the pool location. So it is back to the drawing board on the pool, or move the pipes at a later date.

Tomorrow the concretors are back to start forming up the slab

Day 20 - Piers

We have piers!!!!

I didn't expect that anything would happen today. I was told last Thursday that we would piers on Tuesday at the earliest.  This morning I called my faithful SS. I have spoken to him so many times since he took over our site, I am sure that I don't even have to say who it is anymore.  I have a quite distinctive voice. I swear I am Australian. I was born here and lived, all but two years here, but people that don't know me swear I am English. I blame that on Mat.

Anyway I digress, when I spoke with my SS today he said that the piers were being done today and that he had spoken to the concretors and they were already on site.    I swear I could have jumped through the phone and hugged him.

So here are the pictures. We didn't stay around for long today, but did see the first pier being drilled and saw them being filled with concrete.

The slab being measured out.

First pier being drilled.

The slab from the back. It looks a lot smaller than we thought it would

 The back of the house is 8m wide, but it does not look like it. At the moment it looks like it couldn't fit the kitchen in.  I was actually shocked at the size of what the slab will be. Everyone when they see the plans to the house and sees that it is 27 metres long they always comment that it is going to be a large house. It is deceiving and I have been advised that it will be a very big slab and will take about 50m3 of concrete. 

 We had about 70lm of piers.  One of the things that we are happy about with Rawson was their contract is fixed price, so that means that no matter how many piers they need we don't have to pay anything extra.  When we were going to build with McDonald Jones, they give a provision for piering. In our tender we had 50 metres of piering, anything extra was at a cost of $80/lm.  So if we only had a provision for piering today and it was 50 metres, we would have received a $1,600.00 bill. I am glad we don't have that bill coming.

Providing the weather plays fair for the rest of the week, we should have

Plumbing tomorrow
Forming of slab Wednesday and Thursday
With a bit of luck we should have a slab Friday or early next week.