Base stage

The tree cutting permit was issued in March 2009. The construction was finally ready to begin. One last hurdle: the original builder pulled out of the project due to slow economic condition, and has had to pass on the construction to another builder.

Luckily, the replacement builder did not waste time starting the construction, so ground breaking happens late May, starting with the land clearing you've seen in the previous posts. Here's their details if you want to employ their services!



Where are we now? We're close to finishing base stage and I'm hoping this week my frame would go up. Yay!!!



The base stage consists of laying out the foundation and building the retaining wall around the car port. I'm to be a pole house (as opposed to a brick house built on a concrete slab), so the foundations are basically columns of concrete poured into the ground. Pretty easy to make really, they used a drilling tractor to make the holes in the ground about a meter in diameter, put in the reinforcing steel and poured the concrete mix over it. They've had to use concrete pump as the concrete mixing truck couldn't come close enough to the site.



Parallel to this the Electrician started to install the temporary electrical meter cabinet so they can get some electricity supply needed for the next stages of the construction. In the mean time they've had to borrow the electricity from our front neighbor's house (thanks Rob!).



Base frames consisting of steel columns and beams for the flooring were shipped from the frame fabrication factory, clearly marked and labeled to guide the construction crew assemble them on site.