Week 1 - 26th July 2010 - Foundations

Due to the number of trees on our site we decided to get the foundations designed by a local consultancy Hindley Associates) that were on the Potton contractor list. The design required a 1.8m foundation in some areas and a 2.1m depth in areas close to some of the trees, which considering the old house stood for 100years on next to no foundations made us grin but was not un-expected. We would not recommend this company as communications proved difficult after the initial meeting. After sending out 5 tenders we appointed local company Trell Contractors Ltd to dig the foundations and construct the block and beam

oversite.
It only took a few days to dig the foundations and after numerous visits from concrete mixers the footings were complete and the brickies arrived to start the block work. Trell had worked on Potton timber frame houses before and had to ensure the brick layers measured correctly as the measurements are taken from a different point and the tolerances for timber frame are less forgiving than for brick houses.

We had a delay of a week and a half as the beam design did not get signed off and the supplier had a longer than normal leadtime so things came to a stand still for a few days. Typically, as soon as the beams arrived it started to rain, but they still cracked on a good pace and within 4-5days we had a completed block and beam slab. Maxwell and Tilly decided to make a time box, with some pictures and toys etc in and they laid it under the garden room just in case there is a "repeat performance" in the future!!! (Not by us I hasten to add!!)

We used a company called Plandicil to perform a perculation test to establish the size of soak away needed and also to advise on the sizing of the existing septic tank as building control said it may need replacing. Luckily the report from Plandicil concluded that it was sufficient for the size of the house and number of bathrooms.

We timed the Potton erection team to start the day after Trell were due to finished which worked well as the Trell guys were still on site finishing off so the erection team could check the slab. They had to make one small correction to the sun room which was done straight away, but other than that they were spot on.
We decided to leave the rainwater drainage and foul drainage until a later date in the project as there was not enough time to do it before scaffolding was required.