Trench warfare!

Another weekend of work completed on the house this time digging the trenches for the GSHP flow and return lines that run from the unit to the bore holes. With the trenches required to be 1m deep and 500mm or so wide we hired in a small 1.5 tonne mini excavator for the weekend to take the majority of the workload.

Tor at the helm

Using this was a blast having never actually used one before!. Two joysticks with 2 degrees of motion each gave the hand eye coordination a thorough work out but by the end of the job it was feeling much more natural. Makes you appreciate the skill level of the guys who do this for a living and make difficult jobs look easy.

While the mini excavator shifted most of the soil we still had to resort to hard manual labour to hack through a section of weathered granite that the bucket couldn't get into. This was up to 10" thick at some points and my arms felt the work out having to swing the pick axe to smash through this. The areas around the bore holes also needed the more dexterous human touch to excavate. Thanks to mum for getting into the trenches with me and sharing some of the hard work.

Tor & Evelyn in the trenches

Finished trenches

Work has also progressed on the garage with the block work all complete and the granite work on the front progressing well. The slating is complete as well now on the garage and the beams are installed between the house and garage to take the glass pend roof.

Garage front

Garage back

Granite work on garage progressing

Internally the partition walls and ceilings are now completion the first floor so we are good to go now with getting the UFH pipes laid upstairs.

Family bathroom toilet

Storage closets bseide family bathroom

Have decided to lay the screed in two separate jobs, first floor first followed by the ground floor. this will work out to be logistically easier and psychologically better as we appear to be progressing more quickly. With one more work weekend this year and a work party lined up again I hope to get all the piping down but will need a water supply to filling and pressure test the system before screeding.

Next update in a couple of week time