The Next Stage

Despite having finished digging the trench, lots of little bits needed doing to prepare for the Building inspector's first site visit;

• the few remaining bricks needed clearing from below floor level on the party-wall side

• the gap between the two sets of foundations needed clearing out

• the water pipe needed to be moved, reattached and secured

• the foundation on the driveway side that had been damaged in the water leak needed to be cleaned and supporting

• the exposed rebars needed to be cut through where they met the rest of the foundation.

All of these took time and, although each job didn't show much in terms of progress, the result was that on Friday, June 19th the building inspector viewed the trenches, agreed with the planned shuttering to support the ends of the existing foundations and gave the go-ahead for pouring the footings.  I was fearing the worst but the inspector rang me twice; once to say that she had visited the house, looked at the work and, having taken some photos, just wanted to discuss with a colleague about the ends of the trench and how to support the old foundations, and later on to say that the proposals I had put for supporting the footing was fine and I could continue.

As there were two ends to do first I shuttered and braced them and, having bought 24 bags of ballast and 4 bags of cement, started mixing about 0.7 tons of concrete to stabilise the ends and give a continuity between the old and new foundations.

I filled a bucket with cement until it weighed 12.5kg - half a sack - and marked the bucket with a line to show where to fill it to.  This would help to speed up the mixing process.  my mixer will take 3, 25kg bags of ballast along with the half-bag of cement to make a 6:1 concrete mix. The bucket did its job and ensured that all the mixes were the same ratio and a consistent strength.

As it turned out I only used 21 bags of ballast and had very little left over.  The stand for my mixer is rather rusty and needs repairing or replacing.  I'm not sure my welding skills are up to the task, but I shall get some steel plate and give it a go during the week.


I will leave the ends to set for a couple of days before I remove the shuttering and arrange to get the remainder of the concrete delivered.

I could mix it by hand I suppose.  After all the trench is only 10m long, 600mm wide and needs to be filled to 450mm deep.  by my reckoning that's 2.7 cubic metres of concrete - somewhere around 3 tons. 


That's over 30 mixer-loads - all to be loaded by hand and poured before it sets - I don't think my mixer would manage it!

So the next challenge will be to organise a delivery of readimix to coincide with the availability of two or three barrow-toting friends to help transport it from the lorry to the trench.