A full on weekend, with lots of help, Gabions, a digger and dumper, a rescue - and when you sandwich a bank holiday BBQ with friends in between (thanks Jay & Em), what more can you want? The weather held up in the main which certainly helped.
As it was the last long weekend of year, we wanted to get as much done as possible. With help from Arnie, Dad, Mum, Dan (my brother) and a rescue from Ian Godding of Hitrees (thanks Ian!!!!) after a slight indiscretion with the digger (caused by loose soft soil and some rain), we are both really happy with what has been achieved at the end of it. We managed to make, locate and fill a enough Gabions to protect the roadside; back fill soil up to them to level the bottom end of the garden; dig out the back edge of the plot where our home will be; create a couple of new tumps of soil for later in the build & widen the driveway (and the gate post, but that wasn't supposed to happen)!
As I have already mentioned we decided wire metal Gabion baskets because they were the quickest, easiest and most cost effective solution - but this was the first time I have used Gabions. Cost effective yes, easy and quick no! They we 3.5 mm wire, arrived flat packed, pre-hinged on some sides, with a big roll of wire to tie the other ends. Both mine and Fliss' hands were aching and sore from twisting the wire to lock the sides together (my excuse is office job hands). If you were using them on a flat surface, with uniform stone to fill them with, they would be really simple and very fast to put together - but we weren't. We were spanning an area of approx 7.5 meters this time, with a mixture of large and smaller stone - which was mainly recycled from a fireplace in a cottage that Mum & Dad had in Orleton. The edge where the baskets were being laid wasn't level, which meant using a digger and shovel (well Dad mostly on the shovel) to create as level a base to lay them as possible. The stone used wasn't ideal for this use because it was a bit too big and heavy, proving difficult to get into the baskets without bending them. However, because these weren't going to have a shown face/edge it didn't matter too much, but if we do decide to use them in a more decorative position, it would definitely need to be thought about properly and possibly even going for the thicker wire baskets.
The stone is much travelled; being hand mauled onto trailers from Orleton to Forty Acres, to Luston and now back to Forty Acres with the assistance of trailers lent from MGL Builders & Roger Mellings Building. Lugging stone is hard graft when you have to hand maul it on and off trailers, into wheel barrows and finally into the Gabions, luckily everyone mucked in and we had a bit of extra help from Dan & Arnie!
During the weekend, with a whistle-stop tutorial on controls, I learnt to operate a digger and by the end of the weekend I was nearly able to ensure the bucket moved the right way first time - even when hopping between digger an dumper.
I tweeted a couple of pics over the weekend www.twitter.com/FortyAcresBuild
During the next week or so we will be confirming drawings, trying to sort out the best options for insulation. For the next installment I will share some of the plans, until then bye for now!
Tim
As it was the last long weekend of year, we wanted to get as much done as possible. With help from Arnie, Dad, Mum, Dan (my brother) and a rescue from Ian Godding of Hitrees (thanks Ian!!!!) after a slight indiscretion with the digger (caused by loose soft soil and some rain), we are both really happy with what has been achieved at the end of it. We managed to make, locate and fill a enough Gabions to protect the roadside; back fill soil up to them to level the bottom end of the garden; dig out the back edge of the plot where our home will be; create a couple of new tumps of soil for later in the build & widen the driveway (and the gate post, but that wasn't supposed to happen)!
 |
| Flat packed Gabions, being assembled ready to install by Fliss |
As I have already mentioned we decided wire metal Gabion baskets because they were the quickest, easiest and most cost effective solution - but this was the first time I have used Gabions. Cost effective yes, easy and quick no! They we 3.5 mm wire, arrived flat packed, pre-hinged on some sides, with a big roll of wire to tie the other ends. Both mine and Fliss' hands were aching and sore from twisting the wire to lock the sides together (my excuse is office job hands). If you were using them on a flat surface, with uniform stone to fill them with, they would be really simple and very fast to put together - but we weren't. We were spanning an area of approx 7.5 meters this time, with a mixture of large and smaller stone - which was mainly recycled from a fireplace in a cottage that Mum & Dad had in Orleton. The edge where the baskets were being laid wasn't level, which meant using a digger and shovel (well Dad mostly on the shovel) to create as level a base to lay them as possible. The stone used wasn't ideal for this use because it was a bit too big and heavy, proving difficult to get into the baskets without bending them. However, because these weren't going to have a shown face/edge it didn't matter too much, but if we do decide to use them in a more decorative position, it would definitely need to be thought about properly and possibly even going for the thicker wire baskets.
The stone is much travelled; being hand mauled onto trailers from Orleton to Forty Acres, to Luston and now back to Forty Acres with the assistance of trailers lent from MGL Builders & Roger Mellings Building. Lugging stone is hard graft when you have to hand maul it on and off trailers, into wheel barrows and finally into the Gabions, luckily everyone mucked in and we had a bit of extra help from Dan & Arnie!
During the weekend, with a whistle-stop tutorial on controls, I learnt to operate a digger and by the end of the weekend I was nearly able to ensure the bucket moved the right way first time - even when hopping between digger an dumper.
I tweeted a couple of pics over the weekend www.twitter.com/FortyAcresBuild
During the next week or so we will be confirming drawings, trying to sort out the best options for insulation. For the next installment I will share some of the plans, until then bye for now!
Tim
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