Back on the job

After the frenetic activity in the first half of last week it went quiet while the concrete that had been poured into the ground was allowed to cure, but unsurprisingly work resumed again this morning. I went up to the top first thing while checking my electrical connection (which failed last night and was still down this morning) and found that a large truck was already parked on the access road with the driver delivering construction materials.

I told him that there was nobody on site from the builder but he said not to worry as they’d be along quite soon and continued with the unloading. I’m now pretty sure that all of these guys know each other very well from their many previous contracts and know exactly what they should be doing. A short while later while I was driving up to the ‘poubelles’ (rubbish bins) to drop off some stuff left over from when I moved the caravan over the weekend the builder’s truck went past in the opposite direction and when I got back the two in the truck were helping the delivery driver with the unloading.

The delivery included cement, ballast for concrete, concrete blocks and some more of the hollow square blocks that the builders had brought themselves last week and once the delivery truck had gone they got started with the young labourer knocking up light concrete, initially by hand but later using the concrete mixer that they had brought with them. Today’s job was to create columns on the concrete that was poured into the anchoring foundations last week using the hollow blocks placed over the upright reinforcing rods filled with the concrete.

There was nothing for me to do and as I didn’t want to make myself a nuisance by looking over their shoulders I left taking any more pictures until after they’d gone at not long after 3.00 pm. But one mustn’t be judgmental – they started at 9.00 am and worked right through as far as I could see without stopping for lunch or any other major break, so I think they did pretty well. Here are a few shots of the site at the end of the afternoon.

Here are a couple of shots of columns showing how they were made, simply by stacking up several of the hollow blocks and filling them with concrete.

But there was more to it than that because the tops of the columns also had to be adjusted, presumably in order to form a level base for the beams that it’s my guess will be put in place later in the week. In the next shot you can see one such column and in the final shot how three in what will be the central spine of the house have all been adjusted in the same way.

I’m not privy to what will happen next – I don’t know if a retaining wall of blocks will be laid around the perimeter of the house before the beams are put in place but I suspect it will be. But I guarantee that nobody will be more interested than me 😀