It took most of the day, but the ground floor concrete is laid by floodlight! Its a great sight for us to see. But I get a bit ahead of ourselves!
First of all we move on with the foundations for the walls laid, and quite a nice outline of the house appears!
Then they fill the enclosed areas with rubble and tamp it down by repeatedly driving heavy machinery over it. This compacts it to take bear the load of the floor between the strap beams (or so I’m told!).
So in the end the nice outline completely disappears, covered over with rubble and soil!
Meanwhile the west boundary, which faces the mountains, and has a 2-3metre drop to the olive grove below, is the centre of attention.
This drop forms a “haha” – a concealed divide with the neighbours, and we are hopeful that we can make it at least sheep (if not goat!) proof. This will enable us to have the view out to the west, without any fence interrupting it.
Moving the digger down the drop and back up again is a skilful process.
To protect and reinforce the side of the property we are having large rocks stacked up in a sort of natural wall (or artificial rockface!).
So far they’ve only done the South end of the boundary, and will add rocks to the other end when the pool has been dug out and concreted.
We are both keen to have a natural boundary here, and to avoid a retaining wall. We’ll see if we can make it work!
Up at house level the drains are being laid, at least those that are below the level of the concrete. There have been some issues of access but they’ve been sorted.
We are also worried about drainage of surface water over the plot. The plot is on a slope, and the house is set some 2-3metres below the road level to the East, our “Cliff Face” as we call it!
Together with Eirini, our engineer, we have devised drains, slopes and run offs. We will use troughs with metal grills to collect water from patios and paths, and concealed pipework to take the water away to the lower parts of the garden.
The foundations have been cleaned up Under the ground floor concrete is 5cm of extruded polystyrene insulation
And they’ve dug out a big hole for the pool
And so, here we go again
Its quite a process, all happening over the space of an hour or so. The concrete coming over the swan neck is directed to cover the area. It looks sorta straightforward but takes a lot of experience to get just the right amount of concrete to fill up to the level of the shuttering – itself carefully measured and levelled.
As its being spread, one of the workers uses a hook to raise the reinforcing plegma to ensure its embedded in the middle of the concrete.
Another uses a long plank to spread, even out and smooth the concrete.
It was a long day – the concrete not arriving until late in the afternoon. Which meant that the builder was working late into the evening
So now the shuttering for the frame of the house can be constructed. Wait for the next stage!