Officially out of the ground!

Greetings readers.

The last few weeks have been spent getting our floors ready for concrete. 

This has involved levelling the floor area, building up a few layers of the ICF blocks, putting steel rods in, casting the steel rods in concrete (by hand filling the ICFs) and then putting DPM insulation and steel mesh down.

It's been a bit of a ball ache but this is what our engineer has asked us to do. 

We had huge issues after the DPM went down. As soon as it rained, the rain was trapped on top of the DPM, and underneath the insulation and mesh. We had to find a way to pull up some of the insulation and pump the water out, as the steel was in place, it wasn't easy to untie it all and take it out.

Andy tried to cover it all over with the excess DPM which did help. 

Whilst we could have put the DPM on top, because our concrete floor was going to be 125mm, if we wanted to drill anything into the floor, we would have pierced the DPM. 

Andy also decided it was a good opportunity to put the waste pipes for the toilet, shower, and bath in place. This meant the position of the bathroom apppliances had to be finalised. 

Building control came out and saw that everything was in place and gave the ok to for us to pour the floors.

After booking the concrete pour, Andy worked tirelessly to finish preparing for the pour.  I'm very proud of him! He worked incredibly hard to get everything prepared.

Finally, the day for the final pumped concrete pour arrived! Andy's friends Ben and Jimmy came along to assist, and the concrete was poured.

Unfortunately I was not present to take pictures during the pour due to participating in a hen do for another one of my bestest buddies, Jo (she and her husband to be Chris were mentioned in one of my early blog posts).

So Ben very kindly took some photos after they finished and sent them to me.

It's very exciting to now see the final internal size of the rooms. Not a mansion, obviously, but I'm happy with the sizes. It will be cozy! But not cramped!

The first and last photos are from our CCTV we've put up. We haven't had anything stolen, but where we've had some expensive equipment outside (tractor, rented concrete mixer) etc and some neighbours chased some men off their land who were trying to break into their garage. There's also been poachers and all sorts around so we thought it best to get some sort of security. 

We capture lots on it! Nothing in the way of crime yet, thank goodness. But mainly  the postman and my new friend, Bert! 

Next on the list of things to do is to continue building up the walls and filling with concrete!