House Construction Photo Project #3

Every house project owner's nightmare - rain stops play.
Amazingly the builders were happy with the flooded slab because the drainage pipes did their job (under the slab).
Even though there's no pump yet installed to get it off the site.
Three weeks later, here's the same wall, now somewhat drier, with two planters being constructed.
Because the slab is on rock the brickie has had to build the planters up from the rock - even though five foot of the planter will be underground.
A couple of days later the planters have got far enough for the aggregate to be conveyor-belted into the back fill space. All in all there have been 110 tons of gravel and soil to the site for the drainage under the back fill.
Back filling in operation.
The engineer took a look at the site an announced that 7 more concrete piers were needed in-between the walls.
One is just visible here as it's being covered by soil and pebbles on the eastern edge of the site.

Panorama of the site looking south - some back filling has already been done

The conveyor belt makes short work of getting the dirt across the site to the far eastern wall.
Detail of the southern wall with the drainage sheet being temporarily held in place by odd bits of steel
prior to the gravel being belted in.
The irony is that having spent three days  filling in behind the garage (and other foundation walls) the engineer announced more piles were needed to add more support in the middle of the ground floor slab, once poured. Here's Tommy with the small excavator, scraping 1.5 metres back into the dirt looking for rock bottom. 

Rock bottom!
Five foot down he hit rock, so in goes the last steel tube and reinforcing bars for the concrete pour later in the day. I have visited the site on and off several days a week for the past four months to watch the progress of the build. It's cost more than $200,000 so far and not a brick has been laid.

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