Today our builder used the rock slinger to put down a layer of smaller rocks and then laid down the Geogrid and Geotextile fabric. It seems our builder was right in that the geotech ordered far too much material. Fortunately half of it will be unopened and hopefully we will be able to return it for a refund.

Once the fabric was in place, more rocks were fired into the hole using the rock slinger.

Our builder assured us that even though we needed to rent the machine, the amount of time and labour it would save would be worth it.

With another layer of rock in place, it looks like our builder is now starting to building the forms for the footing for the massive retaining wall that will be the west wall of the house.

All the good and bad soil has been removed and the Excavator that stayed much longer than it was invited for will be leaving – yeah. It was a rather expensive visitor.

The back portion of the boathouse has also been removed.

Today, the geo-grid material which came on a large transport truck that couldn’t get down North Beach Estates Road arrived. Fortunately our builder had a large enough pickup truck to move the huge rolls of material down to our property – they were 4m in length. Our builder believes that the Geo-tech ordered far too much material. He will discuss this with the Geo-tech when he returns on Tuesday.

After the geo-grid material is installed on Tuesday, our builder will bring in a rock slinger which we are renting from a different excavating company to move the rock from many dump truck loads into the hole.

After deciding that we needed to remove a lot more material than planned, the geo-tech has now decided that the soil is not strong enough and must be re-enforced with a bunch of Geogrid material. The material had to be purchased from a supplier in Abbotsford and rush-shipped up to the work site. (And we thought Amazon shipping was expensive.) Meanwhile, the excavation contractor keeps digging and trucking. Apparently they have moved 100 dump truck loads already and they are not done yet. We have purchased 35 Lock-Blocks to shore up the road – most are already installed. Once they finish digging down, they will then need to start filling the hole with new material. Oh yes, the geo-tech is taking Friday off and not much can get done without his blessing. The builder believes things should go smoother once we get the excavation done. (Let’s hope so, we have had enough surprises.)

Here is the hole at the road side.

Thanks to Sandra Broughton for the picture taken on Oct 4th

They started digging the hole for the house and discovered that, according to the Geo-tech, all the material down to the water table must be removed and replaced with new rock. This will cost significantly more in terms of money and time.