Official Construction due to start tomorrow.

          Tomorrow we are due to have a fellow come out to dig our footings holes for us. He has an auger attached to a bobcat or backhoe or something, and some kind of rock breaker as well. Hopefully it will be enough to get through the infamous rocks around here. We have a mixture of smallish rocks up to rockmelon size which aren't too hard to dig out, bigger rocks - beachball size and bigger - which are almost impossible to dig out, and rock shelves which are only a relatively short distance under everything else.

           There is a great variety in the types of rocks that we have dug up here, some are light blue speckles, some are dark purple-black sparkles, some are delicate white and yellow, some are shades of orange and red, and the rock shelf itself is sandstone. All are amazingly beautiful, especially when you crack one open and it reveals layers of different colours - usually a dark centre surrounded by light blue speckles and rounded with orange and red. Sometimes when digging and the metal blade hits the rock quite hard - it gives off a smell like gunpowder. Other times it gives off a shower of sparks.

           We know that the rocks are not something annoying that gets in the way, but instead are a great resource which provides us with free material to build with - garden walls, retaining walls, maybe even shed walls in the future. At the moment I have been putting the rocks around some of the little plants which survived the clearing - such as tea-tree and lomandra - and they instantly look like absolutely beautiful little gardens. It is great to have a little taste of how great the site will look in the future - after a lot of hard work!

           So we have been busy trying to get the house site prepared and ready for the digging guy to do his thing. He says the job should only take a couple of hours if all goes well. In orded to get the house site cleaned up first we had to pick up all the random branches and rocks lying around on the surface, then rake all the lumpy dirt piles and hollows leftover from the excavator clearing the trees. Suddenly the small floor area of the house of 70 square metres seemed like a large area when having to do all this work! Then we put up some lines pegs and tied string lines to mark out the external dimensions of the house site, followed by measuring out where the holes need to go exactly and marking these spots with sticks and yellow spray paint.

           After we have had the holes dug, we need to contact the council to come out and inspect the footings. They say they need 48 hours notice, so that would make it early next week sometime at the soonest. My neighbour says that when he built his house, he just sent them some photos of the holes with a board across it and a tape measure down it. Perhaps the council will be okay with that - we will see.

And then after the council approves the holes, we need to ring the concrete people to bring out the truck to fill the holes. I don't think they need more than a day or two notice, but we will see what happens when it comes to the crunch. And of course during this week or so after the holes have been dug, we will be hoping that it doesn't rain. We can plan to cover the holes with tarps and corrugated iron and see how effective that is at keeping water out of them! Also if it rains then our driveway will get muddy and slippery again, which makes it difficult for vehicle access - especially big concrete trucks! There was not a cloud in the sky all day today, we'll see how auspicious that turns out to be...