Ready for ‘Crépi’

The two septic tank men turned up again today to conclude their landscaping role. As they told me yesterday, this won’t be the last time that I’ll see them though, because they’ll be back later to finish tidying up all of the ground around the house when it’s finally ready for occupation, of which more later.

Today they adjusted and smoothed the earth that they’d put into place yesterday to make it look tidier and also scraped off a layer at the front of the house which they moved down towards the house’s front wall, concentrating on the bedroom end. They also had some more rough stone delivered to place on top of that which was put in place in the site’s entrance and parking area when building first started but which had been crushed and rutted by the heavy vehicles that had been driven over it and also soiled by having concrete and other materials dropped onto it.

Here’s how things looked once they’d finished, the best the site has been from day one, I think.

I was worried that I’d asked for the septic tank to be placed too close to the house meaning that the slope down to it from the house wall would be too steep for a pathway. The older man, who was the same one who’d opened the site up by digging the first hole in the ground back in March of last year, assured me that it would be OK, and the next shot shows that he was right, especially as there’s scope for adjusting the level as I’ll explain shortly.

The next two shots show how the level at the bedroom end of the house has been adjusted by moving earth into the area by scraping a layer off other areas at the front.

Previously there was a step down along the boundary between the original ground level and the parking area, shown by the line in the image below. He obviously knew when he dug the parking area out a year ago that he’d be able to scrape earth away from that area in order to bring it down to the parking area level and in line with the level along the (south) side of the building, that he would then be able to be use elsewhere. That’s what experience does for you!

Here’s a final shot of the house taken today at ground level.

As I mentioned above, this isn’t the last I’ll see of these two guys. As can be seen in some of the pictures above, they’ve pulled the earth back away from the house walls so it’s ready for the ‘Crépi’ (special wall plaster) to be applied. I don’t know much about how this will be done – I know that a special machine is used but I don’t know if they just slap it on to below the damp proof course, let it dry and then push the earth back over the bottom of the ‘Crépi’ layer or if they are more sophisticated than that.

In any event, the two guys from today will be back to push the earth back against the building and create levels to make a terrace out at the back and a pathway all around the building which they will then lay down in clean crushed stone. They’ll also be finishing off the entrance and parking area in the same way, exactly according to my plan as they builder promised they would. I’m not sure when that will be, but it can’t come soon enough as far as I’m concerned 😀