Building A Home

There's not much going on inside the house now that the gyprock is complete, so it's time to turn to outdoors. This is the retaining wall along the eastern fence. These blocks are just "sitting there" filled with blue metal. The latter keeps them in place. There is no cement as these are close to a surface water drain pipe, and might need to be removed for service.

The same wall, as seen from the back of the house. The lower course of blocks is the same colour as the other courses - that row is a darker colour as the blocks are damp from heavy overnight rains. The blue metal inside the blocks is visible along the top row, and the finishing row is just poking its way around the corner of the house.

Ryan (left) and Garry working on the wall for the western side. This stage involves compacting the blue metal upon which the base row of blocks sits. Once this is level, the rest of the operation is quite easy. I speak from experience of constructing a block wall in Seattle.

Phil and Garry were digging this trench during a visit yesterday. It will become a retaining wall for the driveway where it sweeps around into the garage. The floor of the garage is higher than the ground level outside the northern wall, and the difference is too large for a natural fall off, especially given the drainage pit just to the left of the garage wall in this photo. Hence, a wall. And the water indicates how much rain fell last night - 38mm where I am living, and quite possibly the same amount on site.

The floor tiles have arrived. Well, actually they have been sitting in a warehouse for about 2 months, waiting to be delivered. But the tiler starts on Monday!

A bit of a leak somewhere around the Vergola. Chris has not had a chance to investigate yet, but is probably just a minor error in the flashing around the joint between the roof and the Vergola

Groundworks