Got piles: feels great

First off, an update on that worrying piletop from yesterday which looked like it was supporting nothing more than the side passage: a morning inspection revealed that it wasn't a pile but a couple of inches of tube sitting on top of the ground, so only four piles went in yesterday.

Lots more tubes arrived at 8am this morning. Each pile is made up of six of them stacked on top of each other. They are inserted using a technique called "bottom driving" (who makes these terms up?) , and the foreman says they have been sliding into the soil very easily, so poor is the integrity of the surrounding ground. A machine on-site monitors for movement in the original house at all times, but none has been detected so far -- again because the earth is so soft here.

Today the final six piles went in and were filled with concrete and reinforcing steel rods.


Once the concrete has set, the piles will be joined up on the surface by a framework to form a ring-beam foundation. The extension goes on top of that.