16/04/20 Preparation for the slab begins. Materials arrived. As you can see it will be a Waffle Pod Slab. Of course, I know it’s a cost saving measure because of the cost of concrete and trenching … but how on earth will a slab containing so much Polystyrene, hold up a 50+ ton house? Mind you, our old house stood just fine on a couple of rickety old redwood stumps, so I will trust the engineers. What could go wrong when finance & engineering come together … don’t answer that!
And people laying the plastic sheeting that would go under the waffles
In case you’re wondering the little metal plates are the screw piles. Unsurprisingly, Sandbelt would have P type soils.
Boxing work beginning …
Boxing completed, waffles down & meshing
All is ready for the pour the next day …
17/04/20 Pouring the concrete …
Hard & messy work … wonder how many gumboots they go through in a year? The poor chap below in the righthand photo woke up that morning & could find only 3 left boots but not a single right (he must party hard or there are a few slabs out there ….) so he had to make do with some plastic over his Blundstones …
Finished pouring …
Later in the day to see how it was setting …. Now it was their turn to curse the tree – it was dropping its leaves onto the freshly poured slab mwahaha. Lucky it wasn’t windy.
And the end of the day it was all done – boxing removed. Starting to get a feel how the house will sit on the block. Compared to what we were living in (~ 12 squares) this looks enormous.
Slab milestone completed. I think the invoice was in my inbox before the concrete had set.
Onto the next stage, and the next SS who would look after the rest of the build. Credit to the slab SS who was proactive & decisive taking us through (hopefully) the last of the site preparation issues.