It rises from the ground!

"Just hold this for a minute, I'm going to lunch."

Enough wood to make a garage...apparently

Termite barrier

Originally we were going to get an environmentally friendly Granitguard termite barrier (guaranteed for 50 years) . But everyone we talked to reckoned it was too expensive, a big job to install and you always have the crushed granite exposed. So we took everyone's advice and got this Kordon barrier. It's two pieces of plastic surrounding a chemical mesh. Should last at least 50 years (guaranteed for 10) and is still environmentally safe. It cost $639 installed including the certificate for Council.

A few good men and a concrete pump

Concrete pump at the front of the house, pumping about 30m to the back.

Amazingly the formwork is removed in the afternoon of the same day. Jeff The Concreter alternates between using the helecoptery thing and covering the slab with plastic as the weather alternates between sunshine and rain. They started at 6:45 am and left about 5:30 in the almost dark.

The formwork, pumping and finishing was $10,312.

More formwork

Does my slab look big in this?

I've always imagined the garage as being kinda big, but seeing it now I'm not sure it's quite big enough!

Slight dramas with the building inspector. He reckoned the lie of the land was "inconsistent with the plans" and questioned the concreter as to the way he was doing the piering.

After much tutting and serious faces he signed the necessary bit of paper.

We'd also forgotten to send the notice to commence work but he let Wife sign on the spot.

And we didn't have the sign we should have had out the front of the house. When I got home from work, I had a look through the owner builder course material but could find nothing about the sign or what it should say. So I rang their free number but they couldn't help. So I rang the council (the body that requires the sign) and they couldn't tell me. So I rang the pedantic inspector who had demanded the sign and he wasn't sure. He suggested that I ring the concreter 'cos he'd just done some owner building! In the end I rang the council back and they arranged for their expert to ring me...

If you're still interested, all you need is your name, phone number and owner builder's license.

The big digger that couldn't

Digging trenches and leveling was delayed over the weekend because when Jeff The Concreter measured his digger it became clear it wasn't gonna fit down the driveway. Anyway, all was ticketyboo when this cute little thing arrived on Monday.

Stumps out