There must be something in Tasmania’s water that doesn’t agree with the building industry….. I’ve wasted so much time waiting for people to do things for me, it beggars belief. All along, I said that this time, 15 years older and wiser, I would not undertake to do my own concreting at Mon Abri MkII. So I contacted this local contractor, whom everyone around here seems to think is the bee’s knees. He came out, sighted the house site, and the plans, a copy of which he left with. I explained to him what was needed, that I had already ordered the reinforcing, and that all I needed was someone to put it all together……
About a week later, the reo had arrived, and still no quote; so I texted him to tell him the steel was here and asking for his quote. The next day, he rang back with an over the phone quote of $30,000, which I’m almost sure he said included building the block wall… I’m a bit hard of hearing these days, so maybe I got that wrong. In any case, thirty grand being such a very round number, I asked for a written quote. Which took another two weeks. And when it arrived, it was way over the top, with no break down of how much the labour was, or the concrete pumping, earthworks, or anything for that matter, it just lumped everything together, including the steel I already had….. and the quote was now $32,000……. plus $26,000 to build the wall!
I almost fell off my chair…..
That wall building quote works out at $12 a block, which I established was four times the normal rate. So he must have included the cost of the blocks (which set me back $17,000…!) Thirty pallets of blocks is sort of hard to not see….. so what on earth was he thinking about?
String profiles in place
Then to top it off, I visited my friend Dave who’s building a greenhouse up the hill, and the same contractor stuffed the footings up; they weren’t level, causing the block layer to have to trim as much as an inch off the blocks to make the top of the first course level…… By that stage, there was no doubt I was going to have do the job myself, any confidence I might have had at the start of the process had by now vanished. If I don’t save $10,000 by doing it myself, I’ll eat my (very sweaty) hat…..
Having discussed this with Matt next door – who owns his own excavator – we walked over my site with Steve, a very experienced excavator and crane driver who works in Antarctica – I don’t think they hire dodgy people to work there at great expense – and settled on Good Friday to start digging the retaining wall footings.
I had almost (another) month to psych myself up on how we would do this, set the
Depth/Width gauge
profiles up to accurately arrive at the house’s footprint, and eventually started painting lines in the dirt. I also made myself a gauge to measure both the depth and the width of the trenches.
Because the previous excavator driver decided to dig a hole in the wrong place last time, and had to refill it to remedy the error, that part of the bank had collapsed in the heavy rain last year, actually making it impossible to place the profiles where I wanted them. So that had to be fixed first, because a whole pile of dirt and rocks was actually right on top of where we had to dig.
Fixing Trev’s boo boo
earthmoving ute
Then, because the digger was too far from the bank when digging the small trench under the living space, the spoil had to be put on the ute, which I then had to move and manually unload the two tonnes of dirt with shovel and rake. Like I say, this project will either keep me fit, or kill me..!
the next pizza oven base..!
There was also a huge rock that had to come out where the slab will be, because the top of it was actually higher than floor level. Trev (the last operator) reckoned his machine couldn’t pull it out, but Matt’s excavator is a newer and better device, and Steve had it out in no time…. it might not look like much in the photo, but it has to weigh close to 500kg, and it’s a great find actually, because it’s (almost) big enough to make the base of the next pizza oven on its own, and it’s nice and flat!
The rest of the digging went well, even though working so close to the embankment made things difficult for Steve, who did a great job. It’s so nice to work with professionals, let me tell you…. Now all I have to do is fill the hole with steel and concrete….
Damn the Matrix 