Musings on building a workshop and a new machine...

[irving2008]

Well, just an update... today sees the completion..... of the hole...

Even with the digger and the powered barrow, this was a task I seriously underestimated.

Firstly, 1 foot or so down and we hit London Clay... initially that was easy to dig, like spreading butter, but once exposed to the sun it turned into concrete. Even harder were the deep patches of water-worn stones embedded in the clay. Sadly no fossils though I did break open some likely looking nodules of flint.

Then it rained, albeit briefly, on Wednesday night. By Thursday morning my hole wasn't looking like a swimming pool as I feared but the clay had gone all gloopy and walking on it meant you sank in about 2". It was unworkable for a couple of hours til it dried in the sun and then it was unbreakable :(. But I persevered. Damp clay is incredibly heavy so I found I could only half load the barrow else I couldn't manouver it. So now I have pile #2 in the drive (pile #1 was removed by grab truck on Monday) - something like 17 tons of earth has been shifted, all on my own.



All the wood for the shuttering is now sitting on bricks under a tarpalin, so will assemble that this weekend in sections and do a trial fit. Then have to order the reinforcing mesh and the ballast and sand. No powered barrow this time so willl have to manually shift it all, but theres a lot less of it... biggest problem now is finding the time.

Here's the design of the retaining wall to go across the back.