The digger turns up at 7:30 Monday with Tony.  Over the course of the day 2 more piles completed on the Prospect Road side of the house as the digger clears more of the old kitchen and dumps it on the grass!

Tony then digs out each of the holes at the front of the garage and finds they are filled with hardcore – hence the reason the piling rig cannot make the holes – and so digs past the hardcore and refills the holes with clay!

Martin then remarks the piling points and we are ready for the final 3 piles.

In the down time the piling crew start to make up the rig beams using the stell delviered the prior week.

Monday starts early with a lorry turning up at 7:30 full of what appeared to me to be soil – it was reclaimed hardcode for making concrete!  This is dumped on the drive at 8 when Martin turns up.  The piling crew turn up about 8:30, together with the surveyor and his daughter .  The surveyor and Martin set about remarking the different piling points.  No piles however get started on Monday

On Tues Martin realises that the piling positions on the Prospect Road side of the house are not quite right – it turns out that they are 200mm out and a result of taking the measurements off the drawings and not the house – all goes back to Ralph not getting the line of the wall on the Prospect side of the house exectly right.  Anyway the surveyor chaps comes back and togehter they work out the problem and remark 3 of the 19 pile positions.

Piling then starts with some problems encountered on those under the drive and patio being obstructed so they move on and do the easier ones.  It seems like a slow process as they guys knock off at about 3pm!  They even ran out of diesel on day!  A lorry load of steel, a skip, carboard tubes and other bits and bobs arrive.

By the end of the week we have done all but 5 piles and the decision made to add an additional 6 – 6m – piles for the patio and walkway is made as it would be easier than digging foundations (and I think while maybe not cheaper not much more) and certainly more stable.

The piles vary in depth between 7 and 10m typically and are lined with a cardboard sleeve for the top 3-4m and then filled with concrete and 2 steel reinforcing rods.

While there is a constant background noise it is not so bad as to affect working from home.

The 5 remaining piles are the 2 nearest the house on the Prospect Road boundary – these need some more rubble from the kitchen to be removed and a digger to dig out some more material so the piling rig can dig a hole.  The other 3 are the front of the garage all of which seem to be obstructed below ground level by something.

A slowish week.

Another electrician (John) part of Kevin’s team came and moved the central heating controls on the Wednesday and sensibly moved these to just below the boiler.

Martin spent some of the week checking the layout outside but otherwise not much happened!

Kitchen knocked down – only seemed to have taken just over a day!

Danny, Tony (Digger chap), Lee (young one), and Mark (lives on Recreation Road) all involved in the destruction as well as Martin, Richard, Calvin and Neil.

We have kept the bricks from the extension to use on the side of the kitchen which will face the neighbours on Prospect Road – Jon and Laura.

Luckily all the paving slabs came up without any problems.

The piling did not start at the end of the week as expected and while Martin had expected the piling rig to turn up as of Fri close of business it had not.  Apparently it turns up Monday morning.