Day 35 - putting the floor in position

In preparation for putting the floor panels into position, we cleared up the ground that will remain under the house. We know that we will end up crawling under the houses in the future, so a bit of extra work now when it is easy and possible, will save a lot of sore backs and knees in the future.

While the soil was still loose from the excavation for the district heating and water pipes, we hand dug the trench for the electrical and communication services.

These services will only go to the inside of the front wall of the houses.

Apart from the one beam that goes under the octagon, all of the supports for the floor are in place.

THe 13 panels that will make up the back half of the house - assembled upside down.


The first 5 sections in place, tied into the beam at the back of the houses, and cantilevered over the cellar wall. other panels will extend from the front of the houses to meet in the middle.

The space under the floor is quite amazing, and very unique in Ireland.

Day 30 - out of the ground and into wood

A great day, working dawn until dusk, in beautiful dry weather, and finally finished with concrete and working with wood! We spent the morning cutting wood for the perimeter beams.

A machine was brought in to back-fill the excavations around the cellar and the perimeter pears. We also emptied the remaining water from the base of the cellars and cleared out all of the silt, rubble and concrete that had fallen in. It is great to finally have a clean flat site and finished cellar thta will hopefully dry out over the next few days

We assembled the wood for the centre of the perimeter beams, finally giving a sence of the shape and expanse of the buildings.


The perimeter beams will consist of 4 pieces of 225x44 lumber (9 by 2's as they call them in Ireland) but we only fixed the central 2 pieces, nailed them together temporarily, cut notches to counter sink the bolts and drilled the vertical fomles with a hand auger. It was a real joy to work with hand tools on the site everyone else had gone home, watching the sun set.

Day 25 - more concrete

When ordering the concrete we specified that we needed a conveyor, so that we could reach as many of the perimeter footings and as much of the holes in the concrete block walls as possible. We anticipated this being a slow tedious process, and had a trailer ready to take a load of concrete to fill some of the walls by hand. But we really lucked out.

The concrete truck driver/operator ended up being a friend of Pat's from his home town! He ended up spending over 2 hours methodically placing small amounts of concrete exactly where we needed it. Pat was even able to leave the site to go to most of his daughter's 2nd birthday party.


Pat made this hopper, with removable sections, that made the filling of the holes in the concrete block wall very easy and clean.

All of the holes in the wall that had rebar were filled with concrete to create vertical posts/beams within the wall. This strengthened the cross fin walls that carry most of the lateral wind loads in the two houses. We also filled holes points ever 900mm along the long walls, into which we inserted threaded rods with washers welded to the ends which were spaced in pre-drilled bearing plates.



Once set, we will remove the bearing plate, and put on a damp-proof course between the blocks and the wood. The ground floor structure will be bolted to the foundation wall.

Day 20 - preparing pad foundations

We were only on site for a couple of hours today because of the rain, the kids being around and needing to sort out some of the details for the next phase of the project. But we did accurately lay out the positions and base height of the perimeter posts - using the old fashion methods of triangulation with two long measuring tapes, and a long board and level.

We then prepared the basic formwork for the 15 pads - most of them 1m x 1m square, with a bit of extra digging in some places and some filling in in others.

Day 11 - more blocks and excavation

We completed the excavation for the 15 posts at the perimeter of the buildings.

Each post is 60cm below subsoil grade, sitting on a pad 1m x 1m x .3m deep. These will have short piers of 3 hollow concrete blocks, filled with concrete.

Today we finished the difficult first course, and made good headway on the second course.

Day 7 - digging the post foundations

Today was a light work day. We had marked out the location of the 15 posts at the perimeter of the houses with chalk, and the extent of the excavation needed at each post, but when the operator of the digger started to excavate he felt that the depth of 1.5m that was originally specified by the engineer was too deep, especially in such hard soil, so he stopped. It was also felt that such deep excavations, would have required a trench which would have increased the risk of the sides of the excavation collapsing. After consulting with the engineer, we are going to go with shallower foundations under these posts.

Day 3 - main excavation complete

View of the cellar trench from the S-E (Pat and Wendy's end). Excavation finally finished (after 4 hours on site waiting for and watching a guy dig for 1 hour)

View of the trench form the N-W (Bruce and Morag's end), showing the little notch to the left to cary the projected bathroom.

Needed to dig out a bit more in the middle. This will have to be filled with stone, before pouring concrete.


Some water on the floor of the trench, but not a lot. It can easily be scooped out with a bucket.

Day 1 - Continuing the Excavation

View of the trench side showing the soil profile - top of the red band on the cane is 1.5m.


Most of the big pit is excavated.

Day 2 - completing the excavation (almost)

Removing parts of the excavation tha twere missed first time round.

An old water/drain pipe crossed through the site, probably carying water from the well in the adjacent "well field" to the old tree nursery. The original excavation and fill is clearly seen.


Exavation complete except for a small bit at the end! The middle part of the pit contained some soft ground - possibly due to the pipe crossing the site - and had to be excavated further. This will be filled with hard core or stone. Additional reinforcing bars will be used in the bottom of the concrete (eco-cem) footing to help bridge the softer parts.

Water visible in the softer section in the middle of the length of the pit.

Day 1 - Excavation of Main Cellar

Start of the dig

Lining out areas for the pile of fill

1.5m down shows top layer of subsoil, wide band of hard silt and clay below.

2.8m width of the central cellar core of the houses.

Day 0 - Digging Test Holes

Digging a hole to test the conditions of the soil.

Clay 1.5m down.

Test hole 2m deep, after one day with water from the surface, showing the distinct layers of soil.

Ball of clay 1.5m down on the left, and ball of silt on the right (turns to porridge when wet and concrete when dry). We have to dig down and but the foundations on the clay.