Raft Foundations - Part 1

Initially when we started planning the house we intended (as in myself and my dad) to do the foundations ourselves. We had experience (cough cough) of "footings" as we call them from doing a large shed at home and my dad helping out others.
It was going to take careful planning and measuring and remeasuring etc but we were willing to do that. We have 4.5k set aside for the footings.

That was until we cleared the site and myself, Sean and Michael our engineer meet on site and saw the stones and rock that covered the area where the footings were going to be dug. Also with the date of delivery of the kit, May 18th coming closer and closer it was decided that due to time constraints, our proximity to the railway line and more importantly the site conditions that we would go down the line of a raft.

Little did I know the costs involved and that we needed another engineer to do the raft drawings and steel specification. After a few phone calls we managed to get a hold of a lad who said he would do it ASAP and delivered to me in 4 days.
One thing I have learned from this build is that ASAP in my terms and ASAP in the terms of some people is not quite the same, after 3 more calls, a missed site meeting and a visit to his office the drawings arrived. It was May 4th.

I gave the drawings to my neighbour Sean (the digger owner) who also does rafts and he told me that work would start on the 10th May, I was concerned as 8 days later the TF kit was to be delivered, this gave us only 8 days to fix the steel, pour the raft, give it time to dry, lay the soap bars and put on the sole plate, the sweat began to roll!!

Also my mate and myself decided that we would buy scaffolding between us (still owe him the money for it ;)!!!! ) which would save us a small fortune, he was building his own hut and possibly another so it was definately worth his while.
The issue here was that his plasterer let him down big time and he needed the scaffolding and it looked that I would not have scaffolding for the kit! More stress..........