Frames, joists and trusses delivered

The frames, joists and trusses were delivered onsite the other day and to our surprise there were already pre built. SS says they will start framing on Monday and should take approximately 1 week, I asked how long will it take to frame the 1st floor, he responded 1 week for the ground and first floor. Nice!

While we were there M had hired some guys to remove all the excess soil. Since the joists were in the way they used the machinery to push it out of the way, really hope nothing breaks!

The backyard cleared of all the soil

External Drainage complete

The external drainage (hydraulics) is now complete. There's still a mound of soil on the slab and it seems to have gotten bigger.

This pile of dirt just seems to be getting bigger every time.

Do you think they could have atleast did a better job putting the soil back in? Mini pot holes everywhere not exactly all that safe to walk around without tripping or getting your shoe stuck.

The First Pit

Along side the right side of the house is the first drainage pit. From a distance it looks ok, as you get closer you can see how large and unsightly it is. Unfortunately one of those things we could not avoid due a block sloping to the rear. There's a white porous membrane on top, I'm guessing to stop dirt falling in during the construction phase.

 

Sewer inspection point

This is the sewer inspection point which I am told we will every now and then need to poke a stick into to remove any blockages, or we could pay a plumber to do this. It'll have to be levelled once we do the landscaping.

Too my surprise they had removed all the soil around the tree and restored the temporary fencing. See my earlier post about this issue.

Still a whole lot of soil which needs to be removed, I hope they aren't going to charge us for this.

Another surprise I found was that they had broken a major branch on one of the smaller trees. On closer inspection it looks like this was intentional as the mini digger didn't have enough room. There are some saw marks and the I'm guessing the digger did the rest of the job. Maybe it's just me but I though the back yard was big enough to avoid stuff like this. Hmm looking closer at the broken branch, it's entirely bare so they probably did me a favour.

The Second Pit

The second pit is smack bang in the middle of the backyard where the absorption trench is. The trench extends almost end to end and you can roughly see how dam large this is. At each end you can see a pipe sticking up, these are the cleaning eyes. These pipes will also need to be levelled to the ground. You can't build over the absorption trench, so we are already restricted to where we can put a granny flat (if we decided to build one). Back yard is now starting to feel very small. In addition to this, the trench is only 30cm deep so we can't plant any large trees over it. Looks like it'll only be garden beds.

External Drainage (Hydraulics) started

Dropped in today to find that they had started the external drainage and really messed up the slab. Below is a photo of the slab before they started work.

This is after they started work! I hope someone is going 

to clean this before the frame gets installed.

There is soil and broken concrete sewer pipes on the slab. I really don't understand why I'm seeing concrete sewer pipes as I would have assumed this would have been replaced with PVC and encase in concrete. Is it possible the contractors who did the sewer encasement just dumped the old pipes back into the soil? It's certainly not healthy to have all the soil around the sewer pipes on the slab.

The orange conduit is for the electricity and the blue and black tube is probably for water? 

Warning tape, green one says "Caution rainwater line buried below", 

orange one says "Warning warning warning electrical cable below"

  

External drainage complete on this side of the building

Tank slab

 

Mini digger

 The two concrete pits for the hydraulics

Everglas (Evertrench) for the absorption trench

 Gravel for the absorption trench

Chip on the slab in the rumpus room most likely created by the mini digger driving over the slab

Largish chip on the slab in the rumpus room, I wonder if this will need repairing.

 Close up of the chip

Unfinished drainpipe and cracked concrete sewer pipe

Really don't understand why I'm seeing this cracked sewer pipe? 

I'm guessing it's probably not used any more or was damaged while digging and is now bypassed.

The following photos are a bunch of cracked drainage pipes, not sure if this will be an issue or not? 

 Drainage pipes along side the garage

 

The mound of soil dumped at the base of the tree and into the tree protection barrier which I installed. They don't understand the idea of a tree protection barrier?

Shed slab