Spur Wing Shed House

There has been a weeks work of further levelling a tidying the site. You can download a drone video here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eycFB2qHk5rWH89_qG9Zy4Tq3gW7v4Sc/view?usp=drive_link

One little job is completed.

I am still away, but I have a photo sent today courtesy of my concretor who is making a new driveway entrance across the verge. The dozer man is still beavering away at the "quarry spoil" trying to remove the current mullock heap look.

I went back to Tamworth for the day. The dozer has done three more days of work since my last visit seven days ago. The house pad as well as the front garden area has been leveled out. The shed pad has been cut a little lower. Work still do do is the driveway, the batters and a track out the back. Here are today's drone shots.

I know this is off topic... but I offered to house sit for a fortnight at this beautiful 1907 mansion in the countryside near Gunnedah, about an hour and a quarter from home. The house comes with two dogs, nine chooks, a garden railway and a roll-off roof observatory! I am in paradise, although being away from my build is a bit of a drawback. Fortunately I have my Tamworth neighbours Paul and Fiona keeping an eye on things. My hosts are off on a fortnight trip to Sydney and Southern highlands to catch up with their railway buddies. I took the drone to the sky for a quick overview... The dogs are Bonnie (7) and Candy (3). Both rescue dogs that have found themselves in dog heaven, as they get to sleep each night in an air conditioned kitchen...

Today I took the drone for a spin. As you can see the mullock heaps continue to grow. The house pad is 90% down to the correct level. A little more to be done between the house and shed pads.

Today Braydon made a serious dent into the house pad and beyond where I will have a flat area in the garden to the south-west. It just occured to me that a Bocce court may be possible there :), but if a bocce goes over the edge it will be a long walk to retrieve it... Here is a photo with today's efforts. There is another 30cm to be lowered to reach the house platform level, and the hump in the foreground will need to be removed as well. I think we are half way through the earthworks now. Although Braydon has a good handle on the required elevations, with the help of his laser leveller, the extent horizontally has been a little hit and miss as the original markers have long since been destroyed. I spent a couple of hours through sunset and into the night to triangulate the positions of the extent of the slabs with the help of my trusty 60m tape and mark them with brightly dye marked rocks. This will help Braydon fine tune his excavations, although I will need to get the surv...

Good progress today as usual. Braydon took a bit off the house pad, and bit off the top batters, but mostly he worked on the driveway. The broken and crushed shale makes for a great road surface, and Paul (my neighbour and adviser with the groundworks) reckons I may not need to get any blue metal to add to the surface for now. My plan is to go up my road in top gear, and continue on to my drive. About 90kph should do it. I also took delivery today of some pipe and headwalls to get across the council road's gutter. My new drive is in a different spot to the original drive that came with the block. Here are some of today's photos, including one looking over the house cut, which will need to go down another 1.5m at least. There is just so much spoil. I could not do it without a bulldozer...

Down a little further, but still another metre more down to where I would like to be. The dozer has started on the steep batter above the cut. The big rocks you can see will need moving. Braydon was reluctant to push them with his dozer case they picked up speed and kept rolling all the way down through the neighborhood... The level shelves should catch them now. They will make great ornaments somewhere in the garden.

Down futher... The spoil piles are massive. The base is solid shale. The dozer can rip through it at a very slow rate. About half a metre a day, and this is only the shed pad. The same again needs doing for the house pad. I think the dozer will be here for 3 weeks at this rate...

A lot of shattered rock on the ground. So far the dozer is ripping through the shale and shattering it into a zillion pieces as you can see. A good metre has been taken out, and another two to go.

A scene of arboreal destruction to make way for the dig. Good progress, but a lot of dirt still to be shifted. The site is much cleaner for the removal of woody weeds as well. So far lots of small rocks, as expected. It is the solid slate that I am expecting we will soon encounter, which wil slow up the project somewhat.

A lot of dirt and rock needs shifting.