Preparing our self-build site

It was the start of the new year and we were happy in the knowledge that we’d got a few months of engineering calculations before we needed to think about site preparation, ready to take the barge.

Except we hadn’t.

With the new year came the news that the location of our barge and where we intend lifting it was going to be developed in just four weeks time so we needed to get our barge shifted. And, with moving the barge, we needed to get our site prepared ready to accept it.

With some quick phone calls we called in some favours (that weren’t actually owed!) and formulated our plan. Within a couple of days we were back on site and clearing the remainder of the blackthorn and mapping out the necessary space to fit the crane on (as well as the barge). At the end of the first week we had brought down and cleared away a large amount of growth and marked out the site, ready for the digging to begin.

Site prepartion — One large trench – one big pile of dirt

The start of the second week and our friend Steve got on site with his excavator, firstly digging out the trench for the barge before clearing the soil away and putting hardcore out across the site. With this work done we could see for the first time where our barge would be sitting, though this excitement was a little dampened by the fact that our lovely piece of land now looked like a building site from side to side.

Things, at this point, were looking good – the site preparation was on track and the piling crew were booked for the screw-pile installation, just before the delivery of the barge. We got on site with the tape measure and string and set out for the piles – thankfully an initial two parallel lines so nothing too taxing and we soon had the pile positions marked and ready to go.

Going into the third week and with the piling crew came the rain. The two days of installing the screw piles were accompanied by torrential cold rain leaving our trench knee-deep in water and the site turned into a a muddy mess. Whilst the guys stood in the rain screwing in the piles, we sat in a freezing van trying to keep dry but after a couple of days the piles were in, ready to take the barge. This would allow the barge to sit clear of the ground but still appear to be set below ground-level when everything is completed.