Footings and Stanchions Pads are in.

This is a photo showing the footings and stanchion pads which will take the steel I beam stanchions, the superstructure of the building. This photograph shows the run for the north side of the lean to building. A total of 7 cement lorries delivered cement from 1.30 pm until 6.30 pm, the last 2 hours we had to make do with the headlights of the swing shovel digger to help with the positioning of the pads which were positioned with plumb lines. Its all in now , we have been lucky with the weather during this part of the operation.

A View showing the pads and footings for the underground basement for the art gallery, note the 45% grading back of the sides, this will mean there is no need for tanking as water will drain away using the natural gradient of the plot.

Demolition, Ground Work and Footings

This is a shot of the Dutch Barn which has been at Woodhayes since the late 1930's. The barn has 4 bays, 2 of which contained hay harvested more than 20 years ago.We decided to salvage the bales of hay with string and use them for bedding for livestock overwinter. many of the hay bales had broken string gnawed through by rats.

This photo shows the collapsed Dutch barn, David and his team used angle grinders to cut through the I beam supports and then it was a case of using the digger and back bucket to pull the Dutch barn down, the leg cutting and pulling down took 3 hours.  We managed to sell all the iron and corrugated iron for scrap, there was approximately 5 tons, proceeds from the scrap metal merchant paid for the dismantling and cutting up of the barn.

The 20 year old hay left overs is burnt.

Once the steel and corrugated iron was cut up and cleared the site top soil was removed and banked up, to be used for landscaping at the end of the project.

The site was leveled, we came across a lot of green sand and were pleased to see hard clay where the pads and footings will be going, in the foreground we have dumped hardcore for building materials to be unloaded onto a firm and stable surface.  Part of this area will become the entrance and 2 car parking spaces for the building.

We have excavated down just under 3 meters which will become a basement storage area that will be located at the far westerly gable end of the new building.

This shot shows you the height in relation to the trees beyond.

This shot shows the 15 ton swing shovel digger creating a platform for the building to stand on. We were originally looking at a small Ford digger and a dump truck to do the earth moving, however it seemed to make sense to have a beast of a digger in to do 2 jobs in one and saving time and money at the same time.