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Not a lot of progress on Saturday. I mainly got the shuttering set up for the centre pads for the long sides, but whilst I had the digger there I also excavated the holes for the three pier foundations:

On Sunday I did the concreting work for the two pads.

What finer way could a blazing hot sunny day be spent than barrowing and shovelling a tonne of concrete? ????

This Sunday I started the day by cutting some of the outer floor timbers to length and digging the previously-mentioned radiator brackets out of my pile of scrap metal to use to fix the timbers to the pads. Then came the hard part: shovelling the ingredients for the concrete into the mixer, wheelbarrowing it to the right place and shovelling it out again. I certainly won’t complain about the weather because it’s such a pleasure to be able to spend so much time outdoors, but by the time I finished my clothes were totally sodden with sweat and I was almost on my knees.

Very pleased to have got it all done though. Here’s how it looks now:

Not entirely sure where I go from here. I think I need to get all the concrete work done, but that means knowing exactly how my piers are going to work out so I can sink the bolts into the concrete in the correct places. I might have to finish the pier design and then talk to the chap who is going to make them.

Having decided that I can wrap the timber in DPC material to protect it from damp, this Saturday afternoon I lowered the shuttering for the two concrete blocks that I’d already put in place so that the highest one will have its top at ground level. After that I dug out the space for the two other corners, which didn’t require a huge amount of digging as I found rock about four inches down. In fact there’s so much rock close to the surface that I gave up trying to get the pads square with each other. As long as they’re bigger than the obsy base, that will have to do. The shuttering for the lowest pad still looks huge as the ground level there is over two feet lower than at the highest one. I may well re-use that shuttering for making the pier foundations.

The plan for tomorrow is to get the outer timbers of the floor made up and then get the concrete poured for these four pads. The floor timbers will allow me to place the strapping (which may actually turn out to be some old radiator wall brackets) to tie the frame down accurately.

I have some stones and broken up concrete blocks that I’ll also throw into the pads as I need to get rid of them and it will reduce the amount of concrete I need to make. I do need to be careful that the shuttering doesn’t “float off” given the weight of the concrete though. I might have to rest a few more blocks on top just to stabilise things.