It's Excavation Day!!!

I was entrusted with the very important and honourable job of organising an excavator to come and do the earth moving in preparation for our slab. This will be one of the very few steps of this project that will involve an 'outsider', and therefore, very important to get the right guy!

So, armed with the specs of the job, I turned to yellow pages online.

Let's just say, Global Financial Crisis and soaring unemployment my (not-so) perky backside! Tradey after tradey after tradey turned me away, with varying levels of rudeness (laughing and hanging up being toward the ruder end of the scale), but with one general theme - I'm far too busy and important for you and your little domestic job. Grrrr.....

Interestingly, I got the same attitude trying to get someone to repair our fridge, change my car battery, and fix our pool filter... Seriously! What's with that shite? This is why Adam insists on DIY I s'pose. He ended up doing them all anyway...

Anyway, several dozens of phone calls later, I decided to fall back on the old faithful... calling in a favour. It really is true that it's all about who you know. I dropped a name and a reccommendation and BAM! Whadda ya know, we got a guy to come and have a look... the very next day... on his day off.

We're putting down a 130sqm slab for this bad boy, and basically, the job involved the following...

Levelling the area, a 600 x 350mm trench dug around the perimeter for footings and 18 pier holes dug down to 900mm. Plus a few trees knocked over and dug out and a small trench dug for the new pool filter pipes.

Friday, 13th November: Excavation Day is here!

Luckily, we're not a superstitious bunch, because already there were dire predictions of what could go wrong when a job as vital as this one was bestowed upon a stranger... and it's black Friday. However, all went smoothly (for the most part - only minor stress level increases). Adam was bummed out because he had to work, but the rest of us gathered indoors to bear witness to the awesomeness that is earth moving. I don't know if you've ever sat and watched the diggers do their thang... but, it was mesmerising - even on a small scale. Such strong, clunky machines capable of such gentle manipulation. I loved it! I shoulda been a Bobcat operator... except that involves heavy machinery...

When Adam got home, the job was mostly done, and it being TGIF... It was G&T's all round to celebrate the breaking of ground.
Or, something...

Here are some pics...

Looking at the site from the current deck...

You can see the beginnings of a trench attempted by hand... not gonna happen!

The pool isn't always this low/green...

The front - all marked out by moonlight the night before.

Game on!
That stump is from the largest palm tree on our block. Took this guy hours to dig out and ended up standing almost 2 metres high on it's side once removed... Must get a photo of it!

Ben overseeing proceedings.

Removing palm tree stumps... delicate operation so close to the pool edge.


Just a sample of the end result. You can see the stumps are gone. Basically, the rest of the trenches looked a lot like this.