As I have already mentioned, the block had quite a steep slope on it and there was now an added difficulty as the house was skewed across the block to take advantage of the northerly aspect so setting out the footings was going to be something that we were better off getting someone with appropriate experience to do.
Our architect had recommended a builder known as Turpsy to build the house for us as he specialised in homes that were built on steel poles so we engaged him to do the foundations up to the joists with the notion that we would take over from there!
I was stunned when he first came out to check the block out and informed us that the high point of the house would be 3.5 metres above the ground. The slope just did not look that steep!
So the first step was to get the footings in for the posts.
Turpsy bought in his crew, which included his son, and I was astounded when they set to work digging all the footings by hand including 4 huge ones that needed to hold up Michelle's end of the house.
This occurred because Turpsy, Michelle and I decided that rather than tacking a carport on to the back of the house it would make more sense to use the space underneth, so he redesigned the bearer layout and footing dimensions to accommodate the change.
You can just see the extra length engineered spans and larger footings supporting the high end of the platform.
Turpsy and his team did an amazing job especially with the fabrication of the steelwork not even bothering to use the adjusters often used to but relying on his accurate levels takings to get the correct pole heights. A couple of mini cement mixer loads and within a couple of weeks it was all completed.
So now it is our turn, as nearly $40,000 of our budget had disappeared already, so we are going to have a crack at doing the rest of the building ourselves.
This is the second time for m,e as I built most of a large two storey extension on a former home in West Leederville, and basically the first time for Michelle.
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