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<\/a><\/p>\nWe had a bit of a hitch to start off with. Fabien had driven the Cat down the the drive-way to my house and after a brief conversation with Jerome, had swung the boom around to climb up onto my grass and promptly brought the overhead telephone wires down. So I had to get my ladder and he climbed up to make a temporary job of securing them up out of the way. <\/p>\n
They then told me that as they’d have to be coming in and out with their large truck to remove waste material, they’d need to make an access for it onto my lawn and I said that they should do whatever they thought they needed to. That meant that Fabien then carved a large chunk out of the bank to give the truck access.<\/p>\n
So ‘tant pis’, too bad, that’s life and I suppose it’ll go back again. But little was I to know that this would be small beer compared to what would be coming later!<\/p>\n Fabien started work at the north end of my house where there had been some scrubby, weedy trees that I’d always hated. They chopped them down when they were last here and now it was time to take out the roots. That took seconds! They were no match for the CAT and it had them for breakfast before you knew it.<\/p>\n Then it was time for Fabien to move round to the front of the house for the main course, in the form of the big old tree’s stump and roots. Now bear in mind that the tree had been 20-25 metres tall and that it had survived possibly 200 years or more of whatever Mother Nature had been able to throw at it, so it’s roots were pretty big and strong and had done a fair old job over all those years. But if I’d thought that they’d be a tough job for the Cat, I was totally wrong, because in just a few minutes they’d been physically wrenched out of the ground too.<\/p>\n So then it was time to clear the decks of all the debris so they could get on with the job of digging out for the proposed extension.<\/p>\n To start off with, it was just a matter of beginning to roughly dig out the ground in front of the house.<\/p>\n The whole time I’ve lived here there was an old tree stump still growing in the ground right up against the kitchen corner of the house. This had to come out and the concern was that it might have roots extending into the foundations of the building.<\/p>\n However, although I had to keep a careful eye on it while Fabien slowly pulled it forwards with the Cat’s bucket, it came out very cleanly leaving just a couple of roots behind that he quickly removed with his chainsaw. This gave me my first-ever chance to see what the house’s foundations look like, and to be quite honest, from what I could see there seems to be none, really, except for layers of large rocks firmly embedded in the ground. However, I couldn’t see that far down and there may be something else below them that I still don’t know about.<\/p>\n From that point on, the digging out began to get more serious and accurate and it was apparent that this was definitely no amateur ‘that’s about right’ sort of job. Jerome and Fabien had consulted my plans for the extension’s floor slab and foundations so therefore knew how far to dig down and had come ready-prepared with a laser level. Jerome had left before this stage of the job had been reached so every now and again I had to check the levels with the vertical gauge and call them back to Fabien while he worked. And I say ‘levels’ plural, because not only did he expertly cut the ground out to the level required for the extension’s floor slab, but he also created a step up to what will be the ground outside its wall, so ultimately it will be at the mandatory 15 cm below the new damp-proof course with the necessary 5% slope to take rainwater away from the wall of the new building.<\/p>\n One of the reasons for working to such a high level of accuracy was that Jerome had said that they’d work to my plans for the extension’s foundations. This would make it unnecessary to repeat any work whenever I get the planning go-ahead and with this in mind he suggested that as I’ll need a clean, level mud-free area leading up to the door, it would be a good idea to finish off by laying compacted stone inside the excavation at the level specified for the sub-layer of the extension’s concrete base. <\/p>\n This was an excellent suggestion as not only would I have a clean, firm approach to the house, but when the builder starts work he’ll already have the sub-base for the concrete slab in position at the right level. While I was indoors this morning, unbeknownst to me the stone was delivered by truck and this was the sight that greeted me when I opened the back door.<\/p>\n And a bit later on.<\/p>\n At the time of writing, Fabien is still levelling it off. He has done a really impressive job and I couldn’t have asked for anyone better, as he’s taken enormous trouble to be accurate and make sure that I’ve been happy with how things were going at each stage of the job. I’ve just had a look around and here’s how it now looks outside.<\/p>\n And to finish off, a view direct-on from the front.<\/p>\n I think that the change in the appearance of my house is truly amazing and I’m very pleased with how things have gone and the work that’s been done – so clean and tidy looking. I’d recommend Agrafeuil and Fabien to anyone, any time. But this is just the start. There are a few bits to be finished off on Monday but it’ll then have to stay as it is, probably until the Autumn when the fun will really start. Because that’ll be when the project proper will get underway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As I have family visitors arriving in a week or so’s time and the front access to my house was very restricted with all of the rubbish that had been piled up there since the tree was felled, I asked Agrafeuil if they could please come and finish the job off ASAP. They said that … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11100"}],"version-history":[{"count":49,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11149,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11100\/revisions\/11149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n