Good news and bad news

The good news is that at 8.30 am this morning two workmen were on site and ready to crack on with the floor structure of my new house and by the time I went out to greet them and take my first photos, they’d already made a very good start.

Today’s job was to position all the cross beams (‘poutrelles’) at just the right separation on the main floor beams (‘poutres’) to take the polystyrene bridges (‘hourdis’) that go in between them. The beams and the polystyrene bridges will then support the reinforced concrete floor screed that will be poured on top of them until it cures and can take the floor loading of the house.

Occasionally, and not surprisingly, some small adjustments were needed to the ‘poutrelles’ and ‘poutres’ in order to get everything to seat down snugly and level, sometimes by grinding a bit away with an angle grinder or sometimes just be chipping some stray bits of concrete off the end of a beam with a hammer.

By lunch time all of the ‘poutrelles’ were in place across the whole of the floor area together with many of the ‘hourdis’ and all that was necessary in the afternoon was to fill in all the gaps to finish the job off.

And this is how things looked at the end of the day. The two guys were working out all day in blazing sunshine and a temperature of 33 degrees Celsius and before they left I took them up a couple of cold beers each. They almost bit my arm off! I was also pleased to see that when they did eventually leave they’d had a good clear up and taken away all of the rubbish that had been created on site to date.

I was also interested to see that to finish the job off, they’d run lengths of steel reinforcing rod into the metal hoops that had been molded into both the main structural beams (‘poutres’) and the cross beams (‘poutrelles’) some of which can be seen in the next couple of pics. These will further knit together and strengthen the concrete floor slab.

So the floor structure is now ready for the next phase tomorrow. This will involve three jobs – running the tubing for the water and electricity supplies into the house through the hole that’s been left for them in the front and popping them up through the floor at the right locations, running the piping to the septic tank from the required locations in the house (kitchen, bathroom, utility room, separate WC) down through the floor and out of the hole that’s been left for it on the north side and cutting and putting in place the reinforcing steel mesh over the whole of the floor area. Whether they’ll succeed in doing all of that in one day I’ll have to wait and see.

So what’s the bad news, you’re asking? I had a rather sharp interchange of messages with the builder about the slow pace of the project and the delays that have been incurred. The way things are going I can’t see the house being finished even by the end of the year, let alone the autumn, which was my original target. He tells me that all of their projects are affected in the same way and that they’re now having real problems with the availability of materials and when I pressed him on a completion date he apologised and said that things are becoming so bad, he couldn’t give one.

Incidentally, after I’d given my two workmen their beers before they left one asked me what material I’ll be using for the walls. When I told him ‘terracotta blocks’ he told me quite independently that he knew the company was having big problems even getting hold of them in sufficient number, let alone enough for my project, which was very worrying.

On a brighter note, to finish, the farmers around here have all literally been making hay while the sun shines and here’s a shot of the idyllic rustic view after the farmer had collected and baled up the hay on the land next to mine.

So there are still some things left in life to enjoy.