2nd Snow

We woke up to snow on Sunday. It has stopped now and will likely clear by Tuesday when the working week starts after Queen's birthday weekend. Of course it may snow again between now and then, but for now there is only 1-2cm of snow on the ground.

Simple but satisfying

The tailings went in today. It was quite a simple operation. I just had to make sure the tailings were approxiamately the right level, so the floor-placers can position the floor height easily. As you can see the tailings are big round river stones '20-40s' (20-40mm avg. i think). They look impressive and remind me of those paintings of river stones by a New Zealand artist.

A rare fine day last week

Just as the title says. The image shows a bit clearer the whole site with the boxing up, before the steel reinforcing is put in. I'm widening one of the trenches.

The foundations take shape

A change of pace this day as the concrete was poured. The day consisted of moments of great activity and excitement when the concrete was being poured, followed by moments of calm waiting for the next 6 cubes of concrete to come. There was no rain!















The image above shows the great long arm of the pump-truck, which has an incredible 28m reach. The other pic shows Jacob, the builder, steering the tubes around the foundations (blue beanie), with me trying to be helpful (green beanie) and Baz, the concrete-pump-guy controlling the arm & flow with a box attached around his waist.

Brrrrr..

On Wednesday last week it snowed for the first time, but thankfully it wasn't for too long so work was not held up that much. We had been working in very wet, cold and muddy conditions for several days construction the boxing for the concrete pour, which happened on Tuesday 26th.

Level Cut

I'm standing in a trench cut to level using a laser. A long measure (ruler) has a laser reciever attached to it at a height level with the laser, which enables the digger to maintain a regular level across the whole cut. I was particularly important to get this trench the right level as the rest of the cut will follow the same line. The cut is about 1.9m deep.

The contrast/brightness of the image had to be adjusted to be able to see the depth of the trench.

The Digger Arrives

Here, the impressive power of a digger is demonstrated by pulling the big pine stump out with ease last week. At the moment were gradually building up the time spent on site as the builders finish a job in Timaru and this one begins proper. I will have another post shortly with the cut as I can hear the digger cutting the main level cut as I type.

Profiles

A couple cracker day enabled the builders to put up these profiles up easily. Getting the angles right was a bit tricky though, especially when the location of one of the boundary corners seems a bit off. Eventually we managed to get an accurate enough setup in order spray a line for the digger to make the cut next week. Thankfully the excavator will also take away the piles of branches along with the soil.

We were going to have bonfires to get rid of the piles of vegetation but found that the bureaucracy had got in on that too! After a few calls to the fire service, thinking we could just notify them of what we were doing, we ended up requiring a permit from the Department of Conservation, the Hurunui Council and probably eCan. Even with all that if someone calls up about the fire, the fire service would have to put it out anyway and we couldn't light it again... sigh.

Still, all is good and positive at this stage as we have begun to make some progress toward an actual house.