Andy and Liam the brickies were on site on Monday getting themselves set up and making a start by getting the brick and block work up to damp.  While they did that Dane and I took up some of the decking so we could action the last rain water down pipe run from the garage roof area to the Rainwater Tank.  On Tuesday and Wednesday Andy and Liam popped over to assist on another job while Dane and I water proofed the exterior block work, brought the site level up by putting down a good coverage of hardcore across the site, back filled and covered some of the underground pipe runs with concrete and finished off by running in some concrete pavers.
For the remainder of the week we left Andy and Liam to get on things while Dane and I went out to do a couple of odd jobs that had come in.

We spent the previous week getting the ground works and the concrete raft back on track after our shuttering had blown and put us behind schedule.  By the end of the week we had got the raft finished off and we were back on track.
Last week was about running in the underground drainage for the foul water from the kitchen, and also running in the pipe work for the Rainwater Harvest Tank.  The early part of the week we were slightly hampered again as we had to wait for the skips to be picked up while we removed the last of the earth from site.  Once that was done we provisionally started to lay our various pipe runs and inspection chambers into position.  When we had the pipe runs in position and we were happy with where everything was going we then put the pieces of the jigsaw together as it were and joined all the pipe work up, checking our levels as went making sure we had a good fall on the pipe runs so the water was running away efficiently.  When we had everything connected up and we were finally happy everything was doing its job properly, we then back filled all the pipe runs with pea gravel, and then started to back fill on top of that with hardcore so as to bring the ground level back up to where it should be.
On Friday we took delivery of all our bricks, blocks, lintels and mortar mix ready for the coming week when Andy and Liam the brickies will be on site.  We also took the opportunity to have a good clean up as we were close to completing the ground works and wanted the site to look nice and shiny for Andy and Liam!

We had the raft steels delivered first thing Monday morning and spent the day getting them into position and tying them all together to make one structure.  We also had a visit from the Building Inspector in the afternoon who signed off our raft steel works.  The next day Dane finished tying in the last of the raft steels while I set about making up the second set of shuttering for the raft toe ready for the ready mix concrete being poured on the Wednesday.

Bang on 10am and the concrete lorry arrived with our seven metres of concrete.  Fortunately on this job access is good, so the lorry reversed up the drive and could pour the concrete straight into the foundations.  Unfortunately, we had an issue with our shuttering failing in one of the corners so we had to carry out some hasty making good while the last of the concrete went in.  Once the concrete was in there was nothing else we could do for the day.

On Thursday we spent the day making good the areas of the raft that had suffered when the shuttering failed.  We put in another layer of mesh ready for the second stage pour which would take the raft to the correct level and finish that part of the job.