Concrete

     Yes - today the concrete truck came out, and filled our 'footings holes' full of lovely concrete. It hasn't rained for ages here, and so it was perfect timing as both the driveway and the holes were quite dry. All of our imagined fears and worries turned out to be unfounded, thankfully. The driver was a bit grumpy when he first arrived as he had been told to find the lot number instead of the Rural Area Number - which is a big difference out here in the country! Luckily he came around after he realised that everything was ok. We had no trouble with the truck getting over our dodgy grid, up our dodgy driveway, or backing down over our house site in order to reach all the holes. Then Josh directed the truck where to drive, and he and a neighbour who came over to help, controlled the concrete going into the holes. A bit of a swish with the special tool for the concrete chute, and a bit of levelling the concrete over the holes, and it was pretty much done. We did not need to add any reinforcing, we did not need to make sure the tops were perfectly level, and we did not need to put posts in the holes as they are going to be added later with dyna-bolts. Too easy!

     We over-ordered on the concrete deliberately, just in case it would not be enough - due to the holes filling with water a few times since being dug, so the size of the holes altogether was a bit difficult to exactly calculate. We would have originally needed about 2.2 cubic metres, so then if we over-calculated the hole size a little it would have been about 2.8 cubic metres, which could be rounded up to 3 cubic metres. But then we thought we would just round it up to 4 cubic metres, as then it gave us the opportunity to use the extra concrete for the same delivery price. Then we had to come up with a contingency plan for what to do with the left-over concrete!
     Our original idea of using it for the tank pad was poo-pooed by a couple of different people, who said we would be better off just having a sand base for the water tank. We had a few different ideas - some of which we came up with just before sunset the day before - and they all turned out to all be pretty damn good. I will update you with more info on these in a future chapter - stay tuned!