The first hole, of the 150 in total, was started on Wednesday morning (just.. after a few dramas with flat tyres on the excavator transport work commenced about 11:30). By the end of play on wednesday evening, about 30 holes were complete but it was about this time that we discovered that the 600mm auger had been used instead of the 450mm. This slowed things down a bit and meant that there was a lot more dirt coming out of the holes than expected. The good(?) news is there will be a lot more concrete in the ground...
Yet another machine on site, digger count now 5.
The drilling uncovered some of the old foundations of the original house that was on the site. The block on the left was the sum total of the concrete footings under each stump - a little bit different to the footings of the new house. For scale, that is a standard house brick on the right of the photo.
Got to give it to the concreters, each day starts with an espresso, brewed on site..
All holes were done by Friday afternoon ready for the building inspector - all passed with flying colours.
I took the opportunity to place a temperature sensor at the bottom of the 3 of the piers. The idea being to check the ground temperature at 2m below the surface and see how the data from PHPP compares. The data will be logged and plotted over the year. Additional, sensors will also be embedded into the concrete slab above and below the insulation and in the ICF wall to profile the performance of the insulation. Of course, this info. will be too late for our build but may be useful to others in the future.
The sensors are a DS1820 digital thermometer with a 0.5 degree C resolution purchased on Ebay. To make readings I will need a small computer, probably a Raspberry Pi, or Arduino to decode the signals from the sensor.
