Ayres Rocks

It was way too wet to get the trailer on to the block today to deliver the tank. Instead we marked out the driveway by slashing the pasture. We also organised the farmer leasing our land to install some gates and fence off the woodlot so he can let his sheep into the paddock to chew down the pasture before the fire season proper starts.

The neighbour with all the cool toys will be making the driveway this week.  All up there is some 60 tonnes of rubble that he will bring on to site to form 70 metres of driveway. It’s not a cheap exercise but a necessary one – if my 4WD struggles to get in and out of the site it’s a fair bet the trucks carrying building materials will have no chance should it rain.

5000 litre rainwater tank from Bushmans – $665

Nuts and bolts for mould system from United Fasteners – $87.65

House only spend now stands at $230 117.55

The rock was smashed out of the cut site and the decision was made to use a cut and fill based on the depth of the rock and the repercussions for the plumber and concretor. Check out the size of some of the slabs in the flickr account, link to that is at the right of page under “Photos”.

This weekend we will be delivering a 5000 litre tank and filling it with rainwater for the plumber and concretor to use during their works on the site.  The tank will later become one of the those used to hold water off the roof space as it is transfered to the holding tank further up the hill.

We will also mark out the driveway for our neighbour to construct for us to get trucks and other vehicles safely into the site. The pasture has grown out of control with the hint of warm weather, which hides all the rocks and leaves us with no choice but to construct a proper path into the site.

Earthworks – $2750

Owner Builder liability and site works insurance – $740

Steel for the mould system – $720

House only spend now stands at $229 364.90

I haven’t had time to scratch the proverbial let alone sit and write about what has been happening so far.

This update will be quick fire since we did not do much of the work ourselves. At the start of October we measured up the build area and set out the cut for the house and the areas for the topsoil and subsoil spoil. Around October 8th our neighbour started on the earthworks for the building site, cutting as much of the site as he could.

What he did find was an enormous lump of rock and several smaller ones that prevented him making a clean and full cut to the site. We have some photos of the cut area up on the flickr account here. The rock is huge but the camera doesn’t distinguish it well from the soil in the background, but trust us as we walked around it and lamented its being, it is massive.

That rock has since been removed and we will get up there and get some more photos of the finished cut this weekend, weather permitting. As I mentioned, only a quickfire update but stay tuned – the plumber and concreter are communicating between themselves and it looks like we’ll have a slab ready to build on in about 4 weeks.