The diary of a self-builder – Autumn 2016

Week One: Let’s get to work…

Last week we introduced Linda, a customer of ours who is about to embark on her very own self-build adventure in Scotland. This week the work has officially started and the project is underway. Let’s see what the first few days of foundation work had in store for Linda.

Day 3

Our builder dug out all the foundation trenches, using 2 x JCB's and a dumper truck to move huge amounts of soil around. He put the steel mesh into the base of the trenches, ready for pouring concrete into the foundations early next week.

Day 4

Day 4 - We ran ducting around the site and put in CCTV security cameras and still image cameras to detect motion around the site when the site is unattended - we can use the security equipment on the house once it's built, so it was cost-effective to buy the system to use now, as the house is being constructed.

Day 7

We had a hiccup yesterday as the temperature on the plot was down to minus 5, so our builder couldn't do any work except place order for blocks, sand and cement and tidy the site. But today it was blue skies and much warmer, so we were good to go for pouring concrete.

Concrete trucks arrived on site in relays, and our builder used electronic levelling equipment to check the levels as the concrete was poured in to the trenches. By the end of the day the concrete foundations were in, and we had a real feel to the overall size of the finished bungalow.

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