Things are moving along nicely on site. The groundworks are wrapping up, and the first courses of blockwork are now going in.
Finishing the Groundworks
I’ve covered the footings in a previous post, so this picks up from there. The drainage is in — foul water runs to a treatment tank to the east of the plot, treated, then the water is piped back down to join the surface water and out to soakaways on the west. Crushed concrete sub-base, compacted and levelled. Job done. Time to crack on.
As with the footings stage, there is still a constant stream of moving, arranging, and tidying happening across the site — topsoil, clay, broken concrete, all being shifted around as different areas are worked on. A building site at this stage is less a construction and more a large, slow reorganisation of earth.
The Bricklayers Arrive
There was something about the moment the bricklayers turned up and got going that felt like a proper milestone. Up to this point, the work had all been below ground — necessary, unglamorous, invisible. The first courses of blockwork going in changed that. Something was actually appearing above the surface, and that was genuinely exciting.
I’m not lifting a single block myself — this is entirely in the hands of our contractor, which gives you a strange relationship with the pace of it. You turn up, you watch, you try not to get in the way.
A Question of Scale
One thing I wasn’t quite prepared for was how much the sense of scale shifts. The building footprint looked small, then as the blockwork rose, it suddenly looked large, then small again. I’m not sure which one is accurate. Probably all of them, depending on where you’re standing.
The Slab
Six courses of blockwork brought us to the DPC level. The damp proof course went down, and the pour began. Five or six readymix trucks later, the floor slab is in. It is a significant operation when it happens — truck after truck, concrete pumped and spread across the full footprint, then floated off level. When it was done, you were left looking at the entire ground floor of the building in one uninterrupted plane.
It felt too big and too small at the same time. Same as the blockwork. I suspect this will keep happening.
What’s Next
The slab is curing, and the walls can now start to climb in earnest. More updates soon.
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