Ayres Rocks

12 sheets of 1800×1200 formply seconds for the mould system set me back $360

Total house spend is now at $273 288.55

I was on the block over the weekend getting some labouring work done for the plumber. The slab looks great and we’ve been so lucky with the weather with mainly overcast days and a fair amount of rain spread across the day. Here’s hoping those curing conditions give us the strongest slab possible.

The plumber has been hard at it connecting the drains to the underfloor plumbing. The amount of fall by the time he’s wrapped the pipe around the slab and started heading it out to the septic tank is around 1.8 metres. That’s some major site excavations. With some dumb luck he has not found any huge lumps of rock, instead being able to bash his way through with a jackhammer. That works out cheaper for us than a rock breaking excavator for sure but will still blow out his bill somewhat.

Never mind though, we’d had visions of being $10 000 poorer after the site cut revealed those huge lumps of rock so the $3000 or so bill resulting from that is a more pleasant result.

The slab set us back $35 761

This bring the house only spend to $272 928.55

Today we poured the slab. 56 cubic metres of concrete took less than 6 hours to pour and finish. Check out the photos of the pour on our flickr account.

Our intentions are now to let the slab slowly cure by keeping it as wet as possible over the next 7 days which largely will be done by the rain that has been forecast. We will then let it sit at least 4 weeks to reach maximum strength before we start on the walls. Until then we are going to start on the power room so we have a secure place to store tools on site.

Part payment of plumber’s account – $5000

Driveway rubble and labour – $2100

House only spend is now $237 217.55

This morning I was on the block to clear the pasture from where the plumber needs to sink the septic and soakage trenches. The pad was complete and the engineers site report was attached to one of the pegs. The engineer has specified we require no extra mesh or concrete, classifying the site as complying with the requirements of a full cut. After the hassles with all that rock this is the best outcome possible for us.

Tomorrow morning I am meeting with the plumber on site to discuss layout, septic, soakage and drain placements. He expects to be done within a couple of days which means we should with some luck have the slab curing away sometime early into next week.

More photos of the progress can be found on the flickr account.

Concretor rang me around Thursday 11/11 to let me know he’d used the water in the tank and needed it replenished. Problem is he was actually meant to start on the 15/11. It took me a couple of seconds to come to the conclusion this was much better than him ringing and letting me know he would be a week or more late.

Photos of his progress so far are on the flickr account.