Step 2: laying the steel

After the trenches were dug, each needed steel to be carefully laid within.

Two layers were needed. The first, 5cm from the bottom of the trench; the second at least 5cm from the top of where the concrete would be poured to. Plus all needed to be at least 5cm from the walls of the trench. The steel came in 6m lengths, by around 30-35cm, so the guys had to cut it to measure using an angle grinder. Where there were joins, the steel had to overlap by 60cm. And of course the columns needed to cover a wider area.

To position the steel, effectively in mid-air, they dangled it from wires tied to rods that were balanced across the top of the trench. In short - it was a really fiddly job, and pretty tedious when you consider they had to do it for 130m of trench!





Finally, the upright steel poles that would go in the middle of the columns needed to be put in and wired into place in the mesh. These were carefully measured to be 5m apart and there were two poles per column, each about 6 foot tall.

Step 1: digging the trenches

Dave is back, and brought the camera with more photos. Looking through them makes it clearer just what an enormous task it was to get the foundations in place.

The first step was the get the trenches dug. They needed to be 60cm deep and around 50cm wide, except where the columns were, when they needed to be about 1m wide.



The guys tried to do it first using our tractor, but it was such slow going that they ended up having to hire another tractor - the main difference being that it had a bucket with special teeth.

I fear we are going to need to buy one of these teeth buckets.

The first columns go up...

Despite the disasters, the guys have slogged on and made progress. I'll have some more photos to put up (I hope) once Dave returns with his camera, but in the meantime, here's a sneak preview of what they've achieved thus far from Mum. I really like them :-)

This shows a close-up of the first column Pete built, looking I think along the short end. Even here the concrete trench looks endless... The yellow sticky up bits are steel rods that apparently go in the middle of the columns to provided added support.




Here's some more views of columns being built. The gaps are for us to attached whatever it is we end up using to fill between the columns. The inside is solid brick also.




Here's a view of one of the gatepost columns, with Pete in the background. I really like the little pattern he's done at the top - we took a photo of our chimney here in London and it's modelled on that I think. :-) Ultimately we'll probably put planters on top of each column for succulents - the kind that need little water and will trail branches down, as a sort of living finial - but waiting on that until we get the walls filled in.




And finally, here's a view where you can see a couple of the columns done.

digging out rock to put down fake rock (aka why building regulations suck)

So things haven't gone quite to plan in the work at Amherst on the brick wall. I'd had the notion that it would take only a day's work to finish off the trench digging that was started a couple years back. Then a quick visit from a concrete truck or two and voila - ready to lay bricks.

Unfortunately it turned into an epic saga, and not in a good way.

The first bad news was that the old trenches were apparently unusable, as the rainwater they'd caught and held like very long thin dams had apparently worn away the edges and made them too wide. So the guys decided to dig new trenches everywhere.



The second bad discovery was that despite having had so much rain recently the ground was as hard as a rock. So hard that digging the trenches was taking forever, and so they had to hire a bigger tractor! (This is after justifying the purchase of our tractor by it saving us from ever having to hire equipment again *sigh* I swear, next time I'm buying a new car and forget the tractor).

Even with the hired tractor and working round the clock under floodlights on shift, it still took them days to get the trenches dug. The ground was so solid and they kept hitting rock.

And then, this is the bit where I think building regulations are UTTERLY MAD... we were only digging out all that rock to replace it with FAKE ROCK aka concrete. Honestly, I don't understand why this was required. Our 2 storey brick house in London has stood with a foundation of about 10cm of rubble on clay soil for over 100 years now with no problems. (I'm serious - we found this out when we dug down to have a look when we put on extension). Yet apparently in the middle of a paddock in rural Australia you can't build a brick wall on rock-solid ground without sinking a deep concrete trench. *sigh*

Oh, and then there's the steel. All this steel mesh and rods and other stuff had to be buried in the concrete. No-one had told me how much steel we'd need - or how pricey it'd be. In the end I reckon the raw materials alone have come in about double the budget, and that's before you factor in the dire exchange rate at the moment.

Still. It had to be built if we wanted to get anywhere near the dream for the garden. I guess I'll just be working in London a while longer than planned to pay for it all. :-(

da da, the bricks are here

So... it was a saga and a half to get the bricks.  The delivery company never told us it'd come in two separate loads - and then they decided to deliver one of the loads a day early (thankfully a combination of my Mum on the phone, and my brother making a mad dash to get up there early saved the day).  And of course they all got confused about the location, having not paid attention to the instructions we gave when ordering.

But all is well in the end - they arrived safely and they are lovely.  This is my brother Pete showing a few off.   :-)

New photos from Google Earth!

I signed up a few months ago to get an alert whenever imagery in Google Earth was updated for our place. Lo and behold, today an email arrives. They've put on new satellite photos - this time from Oct 2009 when it was green!

It was quite fun to re-do the site plan map and see what a difference it made.  I especially like how in these new photos the dam is full and you can see the little dam shed as if it is floating. :-)



For comparison, this is what it used to look like, with the imagery from April 2007:

choosing bricks for the garden wall columns

We're having a big push on with work in a few weeks when Dave visits.  Dave and Dad are planning to focus on the house framing for the cottage extension.  Pete (my brother, who is a bricklayer by trade) is going to finally make a start on the vegie garden wall, and for that he needs bricks.

As this wall is such an important a part of my dream - basically I want a traditional English old walled garden that looks like it has been there 150 years - choosing the bricks was not straightforward.  Especially since I'd already compromised once.

To recap: originally I wanted a solid brick wall, but quickly learned a tall thick wall for a 25m x 40m enclosure was going to break the bank.  So now we are just having brick columns which we can then join up in between.  To begin the fill in will likely be a mix of wire or cheap fencing sheets, then as time permits  we can thicken it up adobe/cob style... perhaps even stick on cobbles and small rocks to finish like on this old wall we spotted in Cambridgeshire:



So, back to the bricks.  Originally the plan had been to use secondhand bricks to build the columns, because they'd be cheaper and also would have the right finish (ie: old and bashed about a bit).  That wasn't viable unfortunately as the only two places we found that could deliver them didn't have any in stock, and Pete wasn't willing to risk ordering sight unseen.  Apparently there is a big variation in quality - some are harder, 'first fired' vs others are more porous and 'underfired' so you have to inspect.

So then we started looking at new bricks.  Mum and Pete went to meet a friendly Ballarat brick supplier and sent me photos of their major lines.  Which was when I nearly gave up on the whole concept in despair.  Some of the bricks were OK colours, but they had nothing like the textured feel of the old English bricks I'd fallen in love with.

Luckily, Pete came to the rescue with his suggestion of Daniel Robertson bricks.  They're a bit more expensive, but justifiably so given they have a far nicer blend of tones and have captured that 'old' look even though they're new.  Just consider:

Elmhurst Red                                 Daniel Robertson blend 153
 

To cut a long story short, we've splurged for the Daniel Robertson blend 153 for all the visible bits of the columns... and saved a little money by getting the Elmhurst Red for the hidden parts.  Now we're reliant on Pete's bricklaying skills to get the right effect - but I have faith.  He's apparently been working on top-end heritage projects in his day job for a couple of years now so he's had lots of practice.  :-)

We have a bridge!!

I am so excited that I don't care I'm making myself late to work to post this.  Dad just emailed on his return from a working trip to Amherst.  He decided to surprise us by putting in the bridge to the "dam shed"!



Eventually this building will be a (quite fancy) garden shed/retreat.  But my dream is that it will be finished enough by the time I next visit so I can camp in it.  The big hiccup to that had been that after the heavy rains, we'd had no way to access it to finish the building work... now, thanks to the miracles of Dad, we do!!



Dad describes it thus: "It is a full 900mm wide and four panels long.  It is supported on steel pegs driven into the soil under the dam.  It is very sturdy.  It is approx a foot above the water. I could push a loaded wheelbarrow over it if needed. I used all the surplus fence panels from Toora to make an everlasting and safe bridge rather than a flimsy affair that needed lots of care to keep it safe.  I hope you like it as it was a bit of an ordeal to build"


I love it!  I especially love the curve - I hadn't even though about having it curved, had just presumed it would be built straight as that would be simplest, but having it curved gives is such a lovely shape, it's perfect.  The only thing we will do to give it a finishing touch is - eventually - put some decking over it, to make it look like a mini-pier / boardwalk.  But that's a minor detail - already it is functional and beautiful.  :-)