Preparing for house construction

The weather has not been particularly kind to us over the past few weeks. There's been a lot of rain, some of it very heavy. This prevented PartnerBau from applying the necessary coating before handing off the basement. In fact they had to pump out the excavation (at great expense) so that they could work. I suspect that the contractor was actually drawing it out. The water level was always below the edge of the baseplate and nothing a pair of wellies wouldn't solve. But (a few weeks later than scheduled) the coating was finished and the light-wells were attached.

The weather continued to be pretty terrible. I managed to get into the basement for the first time and we pretty shocked how much water had accumulated; over 4cm covered the whole floor area. My earth worker,  Petzold, had been unable to work during the bad weather but as soon as it cleared started with the insulation of the basement.

This was quickly followed by the outer protective cover and the drainage. The drainage required two man-holes, one for the rainwater and the other for the waste water. Within a few days he was done and the excavation was being filled in with free-draining sandy soil. It's very exciting to see it ready for the house after weeks of piles of earth and holes in the ground.

I was initially concerned that he had worked so quickly that there had been no inspection by the local authority, but when I contacted him it was all in hand and he has the pressure test planned. Unlike the other contractors that I have had to deal with Petzold has been ahead of the game, and no micromanagement has been needed.

I've also been working with the electrical installation firm, Brune Elektroinstallation, to plan the location of the sockets, switches, lights etc. They've been pretty variable so far, wanting me to sign plans without costings, then being quite helpful to create costings, then ignoring my response. I think we've done what needs to be done right now, we'll have to see how it goes in the future.

In theory the house will be constructed in 8 days time. We'll see if the weather and fate is on my side!