Day 1 notes

Just wanted to make a note of some conversations with Alex today. He and Simon have just disappeared to get some materials for tomorrow and won't be back until early in the morning, about 8ish he said. It surprises me that they've left already, but they do have an extra man called Dan tomorrow, who will be on digging duty. I'm waiting in for the skip to be delivered, which should be at 4pm. Alex has given me £120 cash to pay them.

Footings
Earlier on today, Alex talked to me about leaving the footings of he existing utility room wall in place which he said he would dig under and underpin, then build around the existing wall, before knocking it down for the new door to go in. He would then dig the new footings up to the existing ones for the utility wall. He said he would speak to the building control officer about it on Wed.

We took a look at the existing footings under the lounge extension. Alex wondered whether the structural engineer and architect had seen the proper footings, which they had when we excavated a pilot hole. He said he thought the existing footings were plenty strong enough, in fact enough to build a 2 storey house on, he reckoned. In any case, he is sticking to what is on the plans and has dug the holes for the new footings, which he'll link with a trench to bring the window more level with the new masonry.

Drainage and decking.
He's thinking that the joists for the decking will need to come up in order for him to get his drains in. He's conscious that we might use the decking afterwards temporarily, so is going to try and be as considerate as possible with them. We might have to re-attach the joists later, if we want to put the decking back.

As far as drainage is concerned, rather than linking the new drainage runs together with the old, he wants to route new drainage runs straight into the main pipe, leaving the existing RWP's to be served by the existing drainage runs. Otherwise, this would involve taking up all the decking. Again, he will speak to the building control officer about what needs to be done regarding this, on Wed.

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