FOUNDATIONS
All the work before the foundation of the passive house was ready to be cast took about 3 weeks. It consisted in the preparing of the building site, in the moving of existing things like the terrace, the garden house and the dwell, and in the excavating.
Torsten is storing stone slabs used in the current terrace
Anton is removing the white gravel from the current terrace
Torsten is removing stone slabs from the current terrace
Anton 8 feet below is "undermining" the foundation of the old house
Anton is preparing for undercasting the old house
The earthmoving team at the end of the day
Now it is ready for casting the foundation of the old house . It is necessary to do so in order to prevent the old house from collapsing during the excavation.
We undercasted first the middle section of the gable of the old house
The new foundation is preventing the old house from collapsing
Then the west section...
At last the east section...
If we had to use a wheelbarrow to move the excavated soil, we should have been doing it 3000 times! And it would have been impossible to move both the garden house and the dwell! It was amazing doing it with the JCB digger...
The west part of the passive house got excavated
This is what it looked like during excavation
The dwell had to be moved: The JCB-digger pushed it!
We got a hole as big as a crater! You would think a meteorite has hit the ground!
The JCB-digger didn't do it all alone. A little help from Anton was needed
The garden house had to be moved too! The JCB-digger pushed it. Amazing!
During all the time where we were moving the dwell, we enjoyed the company of our 2 hens. They were not disturbed by the noise of the machine.
Almost ready for the casting of the base plate of the passive house
Concrete was poured down onto the base. It was smoothed and stamped. Finally the first row of wallstones was laid
Anton found out quickly how to build a mould for the angle left in between
The foundation is ready now!