Digging Holes and Deck Foundations

Traditionally over the Christmas/New Year period the building industry shuts down, but for the owner builder it just provides some additional (paid) work free time for more building. Two deliveries arrived on 23 December just before the industry shutdown, the blue metal and the decking timber, readying us for our building holiday.

Structural and decking timber arrived from DIY Timbers Bomaderry

Some time ago in the schedule I had planned to build the decks over the Christmas/New year period.  The earlier assumption had been that the rest of the house would be finished and the decks would be the final piece of work. Needless to say the house was not done by Christmas and hold ups with the rendering meant that not even the inside was finished. The absence of completed accommodation meant that we were unable to invite friends down to assist with the decks and landscaping. Despite it not being the most ideal time in the schedule, as the external walls had not yet been rendered, the deck construction commenced.

There were three separate decks to build, with two of them turning a corner. All the decks were close to the ground being about 350 – 400mm off the ground so instead of using posts I planned to attach the bearers directly to post stirrups concreted into the ground. To try to keep the structural timber as high off the ground as I could I used 90 x 70mm laminated treated pine as bearers and 90 x 45mm treated pine joists. The decks were attached to the house with 90 x 45mm treated pine ledgers. These small timber sizes kept the depth of the timber shallow but necessitated more posts/stirrups.  

A well planned Christmas present of a Rotary Hammer drill was put to good use attaching the ledger boards to the concrete slab of the house with Dyna bolts. Although cheap the Ozito Rotary Hammer drill was very heavy to hold it drilled into the concrete easily, probably aided by the new unblunted drill bits it came with. The ten ledger board timbers, each requiring several dyna bolts, meant that the Rotary Hammer Drill more than paid for itself with the time it saved. 

Ledger boards installed and bearers being placed

 Not everyone takes a break in the New Year and my neighbour Gary informed us that the fencers would arrive on 2 January to put in the new fence. This meant that we had to remove the old fence before they arrived. Gary got out with the chainsaw cutting off the rails and we each took turns of the sledgehammer, somewhat therapeutically, bashing off the palings. The old hardwood timber fence was not wasted and Gary had arranged to redistribute it to friends and neighbours to use as firewood.

Therapeutic fence removal

 We hired a two person petrol driver post hole digger with a 330mm auger from Kennards in Nowra to dig the 35 post holes for the deck footings. We hired it on 31 December as 1 January was a public holiday we had to return it on 2 January and in effect got one day free. We had never used a post hole digger and despite brief instructions from Kennards we had great trouble getting it started. With some help from neighbour, Gary, the machine was finally stated. We started digging, thankfully Ben had control of the throttle as I had to use every muscle in my body to hold the beast of a machine and stop it from flinging me around in a circle. It was hard work. We had to keep lifting the auger out to shake off the soil. Then we hit solid clay and neither the machine nor I could go any further. The Alan Staines “The Deck Building Book” had suggested using 600mm deep concrete footings however, given that the engineering for the house concrete slab had only required the piers under the slab to go down to the undisturbed red clay layer, we figures that was good enough for the deck too.  

 

We started with the holes for the deck between the main and back pavilions. It was a hot day and the work was so hard that we only got through five holes in half a day. The soil was compacted and we hit patches of clay before we got to the solid clay layer. The work was extremely physically demanding then our spirits were crushed as we cracked through a storm water pipe that I had misjudges the location of. After this it was decided to dig two further holes, considered too close to the possible location of the storm water pipe, to risk using the auger on, by hand. Our work was thankfully put on hold by the need to join friends and a New Years Eve celebration.  Len Beckett, our fabulous plumber, came by and fixed our stormwater pipe on 3 January, in time for our conctrete to be poured on 6 January.

Cracked storm water pipe

Damaged pipe uncovered

With 27 holes left to dig on New Year’s Day we set ourselves a target of 10 before lunch, 10 after lunch and the remainder the following morning. However our technique improved, in particular in knowing how much soil could accumulate in the auger before we had to list it out and empty off the soil, as if left in too long the auger was almost impossible to lift and it take out too early it just wasted time and energy. We dug a number of tricky holes in awkward corners and close to the house, then got faster again as we moved to the front of the house where the soil was deeper before the clay was reached. As we moved away from the house to the holes for the larger front deck, where I presume the soil had not been compacted, the holes got easier to dig. We reached our target number of holes for the day and then kept going. With only 3 or 4 holes left there seemed no point leaving it to the following day and so finished all the holes. 

Holes dug

Post hole digger/auger in background

Although we had both worn gloves our hands paid a price for the assistance of the mechanical auger and we had blistered hands. I determined with a day like that on New Year’s Day every day for the rest of the year would be better than that day.  

Sore blistered hands

Meanwhile the fencers set to work on the new fence and despite the heat had the whole thing done in two days.

Posts and rails went in

The finished fence

With the concrete arriveing on 6 January, the first day back at work for the Ezyway mini concrete truck company, I had a couple of days to put in the post stirrups and bearers. The stirrups were attached straight to the bearers instead of posts and I levelled and propped the bearers up on chocks of timber so that the concrete could be poured straight into the holes. All was not smooth sailing, the difficulties we had with the post hole digger meant that some of the holes were not as accurate as thety could have been. This particularly caused a headache on the largest deck as the bearers had to be joined in the middle over a stirrup, which of course had to line up with a hole. A pep talk from neighbour Gary kept me going and helped me accept that stirrups not quite in the centre of the holes were not the end of the world.

Stirrups and bearers in place, ready for concrete

The deck starts to take shape

On 6 January the concrete arrived at 10am. I should probably have asked it to arrive earlier as it was a hot day and the concrete started to go off quickly before I could level it.  The truck driver from Ezyway was a deft hand at attaching and removing chutes from the truck and reversing it into just the rights spot so that the whole of the front deck was poured straight from the truck into the holes. We only had to wheel barrow the concrete into the holes for the decks around the back, saving us a lot of work. In the heat however, the concrete started to go off before I had time to level it and give it an incline down away from the stirrups, so the ones in the sun are a little lumpy. I should not hae worried, after all they will be underneath a deck!

Concrete in place

Temporary forms used to keep concrete contained

Water Tank and Bath Tub

Our 5,000L water tank from Tankworks arrived in early December and Len and Ben the plumbers filled it with a bit of water and temporarily hooked it up to one of the down pipes. Eventually it will catch water from all three of the roofs. When we ordered the water tank 4 weeks prior we had anticipated that the internal rendering would be finished and the external wall near the tank might also have been done. As it turns out this was not to be. At least we left enough space between the tank and the wall to access it easily.

Water tank in Windspray to match windows

View of tank from around the corner

While the plumbers were out doing the tank they also installed the bath tub. After all my effort making the bath hob and getting it the right height for the Moroccan tiles, the bath fitted in perfectly. I can now fill in the missing tile that was left off to allow access to the bath waste. We chose a Franke steel bath as our current plastic bath has scratched and I got it for a good price on E-bay. With the shower nearby when you are really dirty you can do the Japanese thing and rinse off the dirt on the shower and use the bath for soaking.

Perfect for soaking after a day of building

Window set at right height for viewing from bath

Lovely curved bath spout

A Spate of Problems

We had been off site for some time when we returned it was clear that something had gone wrong on the most recently rendered walls. The walls were very patchy and had much larger cracks than any of the hairline cracks we had before. The walls were also not as smooth and in parts almost looked pitted. Having put so much work into every aspect of the house I cannot leave those walls as they are, even if it means putting another coat of render on them myself. The only cause I can think of is that the render had too much water in it. As the weather has got warmer the render has been getting more and more water in it and it may have come to a tipping point where this has caused a significant difference in how it has dried and the finished result. We will have to go back and do an area using a less wet mix and see if the finish goes back to that of the earlier walls that were done. The flow on effect is that the rendering of the internal walls will not be finished before Christmas, so the floor will not be able to be completed and we will not be able to live inside. I am disappointed by this, but would much rather a well finished house than some patchy cracked walls just for the sake of a bit of time. 

Patchy render finish

Big cracks and pitted texture to render

Our neighbours are building a large shed and needed to run stormwater from there to the front of their block. They suggested that we connect the overflow from our water tank through their block to the street rather than having to do a pit in the backyard for the stormwater as, due to the slope of the land and that we are a battle axe block, we cannot run our stormwater to the street through our block. I advised our plumber of this and because we did not need to get a pit in the backyard any more I arranged for the excavators to come in and level the block. Our neighbours were advised by Council that they could not just allow the stormwater to go through their block without an easement. This was not an option so now we need to do pit in the backyard again and I have now got my sequencing all wrong by getting the excavators in to do the levels before the plumber put in the stormwater pit. We will also have to try and keep the tank half full so we don’t end up with an overly soggy patch in the backyard every time we get a downpour. 

The first rangehood we bought was larger than the size described in the brochure, so we had to return it, frustratingly the appliance store would only give us an exchange voucher and not a refund. Limited to what was on offer at the appliance store we bought another rangehood. It fitted the cupboard but was slightly higher than the previous one. Cutting out the hemp with a cold chisel to make room for the exhaust for the rangehood was easy until I found that I hit a stud and a noggin. The noggin had been put in so that I was able to hang the kitchen cupboards from the frame. 

I am making the the ducting for the exhaust from the rangehood from 150mm plumbing pipe since I need a 90 degree elbow and otherwise it is a very short run straight out the wall. The pipe just hit the bottom part of the noggin and once side of the stud. Not wanting to reduce the strength of the stud too much I decided to angle the ducting so that I just had to take off the corner of the stud. This was not as easy as it first seemed.

To add to my woes or perhaps because my thinking had been clouded by my woes, in trying to put in the exhaust for the rangehood I drilled through an electrical cable. An electrical cable that ran straight through a stud, with the cable cut halfway through the stud. The cable was for the power point for the rangehood and thankfully the power point circuit was turned off. In my defence the cable looked like it went through lower than it did, but I should have been more careful and consulted the photographs of the frame and wiring like I did when choosing how and where to attach the kitchen cupboards. I went through the now usual method of problem solving: tears, anger, then solution.  I moved the power point. I chipped out a bit more wall until the cut cable was long enough to attach to a power point. I then chased in the longer part of the cable so that it too came out at the same place. A beautiful solution, except that the power point is now on the opposite side of the rangehood to the power cord, but it will all be inside a cupboard so no one will see this. 

 

Cut power cord

Duct hole and moved power point

The upset and disappointment of all these disasters was washed away by the hot water of a long shower; the first in the house where the hot water came out of a tap and not a kettle. While we had been off site the plumbers came around and installed the regulator for the gas bottles. We hooked up a barbecue LPG bottle temporarily while we waited for delivery of the full size bottles. The power points for the house are not yet functional so we put an extension cord from the meter box to the instantaneous gas hot water unit and with gas and power connected finally had that true sign of an advanced civilisation – hot water on tap. The Methven Satinjet water saving shower head gave such a luxurious evenly spread flow of water it served to confirm the severe shortcomings of the water saving shower heads we have put up with for the last 10 years. 

Land Levelled

We had undertaken the big task of completely clearing the site ready for the excavators. The clearing included picking up all the big and little bits of timber lying around, removing the duckboards we had installed around the house to allow us to work out of the mud as well as moving a large pile of timber left over from the frame and roof that had been in the place where the truck had left it over a year ago. The left over bags of hemp, that looked like a blue elephant in the front yard, also had to be moved to a location that did not have to be excavated. The only such spot we could find was beside the driveway and so began the task of unstacking the piled bags moving the pallets they were on and lifting, the lighter bags, and dragging, the heavier bags, to their new site then recovering them all with tarps and plastic. Finally a brush cutter was hired to cut all the grass that had grown up around the site, particularly around the wood pile where the grass had been left to grow for over a year and had completely covered some previously neatly sorted and stacked piled of rubbish.  Having been building for 1 ½ years we finally took our first load of rubbish to the tip. Our sorting, recycling and reusing of what we could had saved a lot waste. 

Front of the house for the first time without building materials stacked in front of it

My original excavator Brummy, whose machines were now too big to fit around the house put me onto Stephen, the man with the little diggers, from Jervis Bay Underground. The day before we got to site Stephen the excavator had been in and put in a drain along the back of the house, where the land sloped toward the house. A further pit and drain were put in outside the back bedroom where we had previously got “Lake Culburra” when it rained. 

Drain installed and ground levelled

The land had been cut and filled for the slab with no extra material to be brought on site and the waffle pod slab was formed on top of this levelled area. We now had 5 tonnes of crusher dust brought in to help level and shape the land. Soil was kept away from where we are going to put the decks as we sought to keep as big a gap between the soil and land as possible to allow for air flow.

The diggers got to work and by the end of the day the land was levelled and sloped where needed and looked like a blank canvas ready to start creating a garden, but first we need to get the rendering finished and the decks built.

Front pavilion ready for decks to be built

Back pavilion, with ground sloping down toward front of block

West side of block

Ground levelled and pavers installed ready for gas bottles

Meanwhile inside the house we started hanging the overhead cupboards in the kitchen, the floor units will have to wait until we get the floor refinished.  Disaster struck when we found that the range hood that was supposed to fit on the cupboard was too deep and would not fit in the cupboard. Later investigation showed that the size stated in the brochure for the product was different from the actual size. This brought a halt to the cupboard installation.

Half the overhead kitchen cupboards installed

On another front, a milestone was reached, after several months of work the first half of the shower mosaic has been completed. My mosaic technique has improved, so I hope the second half will not take as long.  

First half of "The Great Wave" mosaic

Lights, Water, Action

The house moved closer to completion with the excitement of two trades, the plumber and electrician, being on sit on the same day.

The bushfires and advice to get out of the Blue Mountains had meant that I had two extra days on site to build. This time was used making the laundry bench out of half a table I had bought from the “rejects” section of IKEA. Into this was placed a sink, bought while on sale, that we had intended for the kitchen, but was no longer needed so found a new place in the laundry. Rails were unscrewed from the half table and reused as supports for the laundry bench.

Laundry bench, sink and tiling

In the laundry I tried my hand at tiling, a 100mm border of white tiles on one side and under and 200mm above the laundry sink and bench, using 300 x 200mm tiles, on the other. My tiling skills were learnt from various You Tube clips. I called up my tiled and used the same adhesive he had “Gripflex.” My skills with the notched trowel were rudimentary and I found it difficult to evenly spread the adhesive in the confined space under the laundry bench. Grouting the following day was a much easier task, I had had some experience with this from doing mosaics and the rubber grout spreader I had bought from the hardware store made the task much easier. On the third day white silicon went in along the joints between the walls and the walls and floor.

I had been disappointed to find that my beautifully tiled bathroom has cracked grout along the wall joints, my YouTube tiling research having suggested that silicon be used in these locations to avoid cracking if there was movement between the walls. A phone call to the tiler and the suggestion that I scratch out the grout and fill the joint with silicon led me to undertake this job. Despite the Aldi brand caulking gun I had bought coming with little plastic curved shapes to do corners I resorted to using my fingers to smooth out the silicon, they seemed to work much better.  

Cracked grout in the join between walls

More cracks in the grout

So when Len and Ben the plumbers arrived on site, although the tiles in the laundry had not yet been grouted, enough work had been done for them to put in the laundry sink and tap. In no time we had running water. The excitement to be found in watching a tap run can only be understood by those who have lived without this luxury.

But our enjoyment of the mod cons did not end there. The tiled bathroom had a flush toilet installed, the bathroom vanity unit and tap and most importantly the shower were all installed an operational. This brought us one step closer to the long awaited dream of hot water on tap. The absence of a suitable place to put the LPG gas bottles prevented us from having hot water. This was to be quickly remedied as the excavators were booked for the following week and the second hand 600 x 600 concrete pavers were just waiting to be used as a base for the gas bottles.

Bathroom vanity, shower and exhaust fan all working

Flushing toilet

Having done most of the work on site ourselves over the previous few months, with the exception of the rendering, it was bizarre to have two trades on site at the same time. Paul the electrician had come down to fix a problem with the solar electricity panels. It turns out the problem was some incorrectly manufactured fuses that had shorted out. These were replaced with a more reliable model.

While on site Paul got to work installing lights and switches. The bedrooms and kitchen/living room now all have working lights, as does the laundry and front bathroom, which also has a working exhaust fan. This was another significant step into the modern world. No more working a night by head torch or floodlight. When it is the first time you do it, a simple task such as turning on a light switch becomes a much more conscious and significant task.

Ceiling light in the bedroom

Laundry light

So excited I took a photo of a light switch

The internal and external wall lights could not be completed until the rendering is done. We will also have to wait for another day for the power points, but for now I am satisfied with the simple joys of water coming out of a tap and light at the flick of a switch. 

Rendering continued with the main kitchen/living room being completed and the final bedroom being started.

North wall in the main room with pendant lights awaiting their shades

South wall in the main room

First wall in the third bedroom freshly rendered