Format’s next step was delivery of the steel frame. Sadly the weather has not played well. Between the slab being poured and the steel being delivered there’s been the wettest July in 13 years. Over 80mm! This has played havoc with both our driveway and also with Format’s delivery of the steel. The problem came down to the ability of a semi to turn at the end of the access track. Sadly the water made it impossible for a truck to turn. Added to Format changing the delivery date from one where there had been 5 days of fine weather to one where there had been 20mm of rain. Hence a crane was needed – At our cost At least now the steel frame is ready to go up. Sadly it’s still too wet around the edges of the house for a bobcat to clean up and lay some more rubble (even though the rubble has been delivered).

On the non format side of things we have quite a few other things on the go. Our rain water tanks have been installed! 3 tanks at 23650 litres each! The base for these took quite a while to prepare. 12 tonnes of dolamite sand was used to level up the area and also to provide a solid base for the tanks. After all it’s 1tonne per 1000 litres of water. Hence that’s a total of 72 tonnes we have in an area of 14 metres by 4 meters. We certainly don’t want them to move!

With the tanks delivered (Many thanks to John, Phil, Ross, Drew and Andrew for their help), it was now time for the shed to be put up. We need the shed up to both help catch water and also to give us somewhere to store things on the block – something that has proved very difficult – It’s really annoying when you have lots of tools but can’t use them as they are all packed.

So the base of the shed has now been prepared (18 tonnes of rubble – all shifted and leveled by hand). The holes for the frame have been dug and the shed is set to go up on Thursday. So it’s all underway. We can’t wait to get in to the house and every little delay is really annoying there, but it’s getting there and we know it’s worth the wait.

A sample of the access track/shed pad (includes house)

After attending Final selections Monday, Tuesday we received the site plans from our the engineers for both our shed pad and the access track. This is the final piece of the puzzle that we needed in order to make Tea Tree Gully council happy.

In Hills Face Zone, the council requires details about anything that requires earth works. This includes putting in a driveway (aka Access Track). The ironic thing is they actually need the access track in order to approve the house. Sadly the Access track was not included on the House application that was lodged.

So on Wednesday a quick visit to the council chambers and a little explaining solved a lot. I believe the members of planning are happy to work with people but often they get information second or third hand or people blatently ignore their guidelines. Hence no wonder they get annoyed.

Anyway, after explaining that we wanted to lodge plans for the shed AND the access track the lady at the desk refered me to the person looking after our house application. After reexplaining the situation the only alteration they required was a letter from us stating we would not commence construction of the shed before the house had reached “Lock Up” stage. Their reasoning for this is they don’t want people living out of sheds.

Dragon (the person looking after our house) then was happy to accept the shed application and indicated he would use the access track plan on the shed application to also assess the house application.  I was even able to lodge the shed application without the letter promising to provide it by the end of the day.

Hence I later emailed through the letter – later to fax it as sadly the council was unable to open the letter in the email I sent.

So after all this we have now lodged everything we need with council! So it really is a waiting game now. We are waiting on council to approve the house, the access track and the shed! Once this is done we can start getting things built!