After digging out the extra 500mm depth in the footings, we called in the Building Inspector to check over our work, and sign it off prior to concreting, which he duly did.  I placed our concrete delivery for 9am Wednesday morning, and we took a day off on the Tuesday as there was nothing more we could do until the concrete arrived.  We arrived on site at 8am ready for our concrete at 9am, and what did we find?  The 7 metre run of footings had caved in due to the heavy rain on the Tuesday.  It was a mess.  Dave at the concrete factory was kind enough to put the concrete back until 10am.  So we had two hours to clear the footings!  Wayne jumped on the digger (no change there then!) and started to get out what earth he could, while Stu and I put on our fashion wellies and had the joy of doing even more hand digging.  After a frantic 90 minutes of digging, we had the footings back to their former glory and ready for the concrete which arrived just before 10am.  Big lorry and little drive don’t go to well, and it was very tight for space, but we just about got the lorry into position to deposit its load.  Once we had tampered the concrete down to our required level we were all done.  All this by 11.30 in the morning!

On Thursday Wayne and Stu were filling up skips with the over site earth so we could get the earth down to level ready for the block and beam floor which was arriving Friday, only one week after making the call to David at EH Smith.  On the Friday we started to lay the trench blocks, and Wayne started on bringing the brick and block cavity wall up to damp level, and we actually had a nice sunny day for a change!  So fingers crossed for some good weather the following week, we are hoping to have the foundations completed and all signed off.  Thats the plan anyway!