Working towards Basement Day!!

Well, we were doing OK up until we hit a bit of a problem.

The problem was a short length of water main which intruded into our site and which rather unfortunately was connected to the live main. The problem was exacerated by the fact that Baz ( with the excavator) picked up this short length of main with his excavator bucket and the water main became detached from the stop end. There's a lot of water that comes out of a 100mm water main at 5.5 bar pressure!!!!

The water company were excellent ....they arrived quite quickly and diverted a team of guys to put matters right. It really wasn't our fault at all as we were working well away from where the plans show the water main. This was an old section of main which wasn't shown on any records and so nobody knew it was there.............but we found it !!!! Baz was exonerated of any blame whatsoever and continued on in the now very small dry bit of the site.

For a few hours the site was awash with fresh drinking water...filling up our site and flooding down the road, bringing our new neighbours to their doorstops wondering why their showers and dishwashers wouldn't work.

That was all the activity yesterday..but today the sun shines and the preparation of the site continues, with more gravel , another 20 tonnes, and lining the excavation with Terram and tidying and levelling in readiness for Monday when the basement team should arrive.

I have to send Volker( Huf basement manager) some photos of the site so that he can be assured that we have done everything that needs to be done. Should I enclose one of the event yesterday which looks like something akin to the Victoria Falls ?? perhaps not !!

By mid morning tommorow everything will be in place. The level of the base will be within the 30mm tolerance allowed. If everything goes OK it will now be down to Huf Haus to complete the project, well in theory anyway!!!.