Outdoor excavation has begun

This past week, I have met with the drainlayer, a spouting guy, a glazier, a scaffolding guy and a painter. I am yet to meet the joiner, and another painter. Then we sit down with our builder and formulate a plan.

As mentioned in the past post, the drainlayer did not have good news. All of the clay piping needs replacement as it is cracked and leaking. And to make matters worse, half of the drains lie underneath 40 years of garden growth - from the blue marker in the photo below onwards:



Hmm....he reckoned we could save heaps of money by clearing the way ourselves, and even digging the trench for the new pipes...so today Dad and Matt got to it:

It was really hard, hot work....with a howling 'Norwester blowing while they were at it. But they have cleared the bulk of the garden required (220kg of green waste today alone), and so digging can almost begin.


...but the digging may actually be the really hard part, as there seems to be roots (particularly ivy) growing deep all along the pipe line (hence, the reason it is all cracked and stuffed). So it may be a case of dig, dig, saw roots...

For the observant among you, you may notice a grey smudge in the photo above - a little grey cat came and had a nap in the sunny, dusty patch left after the afternoon's work...cheeky puss.

Dad has kept a record of the amount of green waste we have carted off and it's getting close to 2 tonnes!! Oh man, that is a lot of garden rubbish.

Mum got on board today too, weeding and clearing around the front door:




Meanwhile, we finished the final coat of polyurethane in the laundry, and I have lifted all the old tiles in the upstairs toilet...but more of that in another post.