Footing Holes Dug

     Well the good news is that the footings holes are dug, a pretty easy job and hardly any rocks encountered. The bad news is that the truck completely destroyed our new driveway when it arrived. The guy did his best to fix it with his little digging machine, and it wasn't exactly his fault because there were a couple of dodgy bits of driveway which had hidden trapped compartments of water. This was due to the hole left from the felled tree, the clay under the road base, and the swale failing to keep water from running all the way down. Anyway eventually the truck was positioned so that it could unload the digger and roll up to the house site to dig the footings.

          Josh was a fantastic assistant who carefully positioned the auger onto each marked spot, pulled rocks out of the way and picked bits of root stuck on the end of the auger off. It was a lovely sound hearing the auger hitting those rocks and just digging right past them, much easier than trying to do it by hand! The last two holes were a bit tricky as they had a lot more rocks, and ended up being a lot wider than they needed to be, in order just to get past those rocks to get sufficient depth. We didn't need the rock breaker or anything so that was a relief.

          So now we have 4 rows of 5 holes with an extra 3 at the western end for the verandah, each hole 60cm deep and 45cm wide. Then we got the guy to dig a bit of a pad at the eastern end for the tank to sit - I was thinking that we could pour extra concrete there but apparently it would be better if it was just sand for the tank base. A bit more research before the tank is delivered and we will work it out exactly what we are going to do for that. Now we will have to figure out something else for a place to put the extra leftover concrete - a little shed slab maybe?
          There was even time to ring the council at the end of the day, and schedule them to come and check the footings, which should be early next week sometime. Meanwhile we just need to tidy up the holes by hand and dig out the last little bits of dirt and rock. Then comes the tricky part - waiting until the driveway seems like it will be ok for a big heavy cement truck to drive up it. And hoping that it doesn't rain.