A picture of Chris-the-groundworker sweeping the living room

May 6th and the foundations went in last week. We can see where the house is now - very exciting - I have been walking around the spaces pretending the house is up and only going through the 'doorways'! Very sad.

The installation of the foundations was not without incident. We dug trenches which were then filled with poured concrete from a mixer lorry. The trenches were very deep (because of all the trees around which can affect the stability of the foundations) and in some places we had collapses. The soil is mostly clay which holds up well, but in places there are patches of sand which caved in, sometimes bringing the clay above them down too. Then all the collapsed stuff had to be cleared out of the trench, and of course we needed to pour in more concrete. Plus water came in at the bottom and that had to be pumped out. If the groundworkers saw a collapse coming in time they would shore up the sides with plywood or with metal shutters.

So we had a digger and a dumper truck all week, with concrete lorries coming at regular intervals. Also an enormous amount of excavated soil to be shifted, so lorries coming to shift that too. Turns out we have very deep good-quality topsoil, some of which has now gone to Rendlesham, and others to people closer by. I could not bear for the topsoil just to go to landfill - it is brown gold! We have quite a heap still left for our own garden _when_ we get around to making it.

I have spent a lot of the week going through all the window sizes and positions with a fine-toothed comb. The thing about windows and doors is that their design has twice the effect of other elements: they affect both inside and outside. Anyway I feel quite pleased with it now and we think that the planners will pass the changes, so the new drawings are going off to the timber frame manufacturers.

Anyway here are some variations on a hole-in-the-ground. Not in particular order. Hopefully you can see how deep it goes. Also hopefully this might be the last blog dealing with demolishing things and digging up the ground. From now on we can only go up....