The day(s) of the big drill finally arrived! From first thing on Monday, GreenHeat Renewables were on site in force getting their drilling rig up and running. By lunchtime, they were set up to go. Monday afternoon and the most of Tuesday saw the team making steady progress on the 200m of soil and rock they needed to drill through for our borehole. In the pictures, you can see the vertical stack of metal extension poles that they gradually added to the drill bit as they progressed deeper. Plenty of water came out of the hole as the drilling went on, which we’re told is a good sign – plenty of underground flow to keep the heat flowing for our ground source heat pump.

TRF have also still been busy. We now have an all but completed top layer of decorative blockwork, as well as a start made on infilling the the building floors. Type 1 hardcore has been moved inside the walls, with more to come, followed by sand, damp-proofing, and finally, concrete.

The blocks keep coming… (check out the intricate cuts, joining blocks to steel by TRF!) but this week, we have our first decorative finishing stones around the base of the outer walls! A lovely buff limestone will cover the gap between the bottom of the final larch and the ground. It’s also been a week of external contractors. GreenHeat Renewables have been on site ready for the ground source heat pump borehole to be drilled next week. They’ve put nice jointed ends on the heating flow and return pipes that were laid last week.

We’ve also had local tree surgeon Rob, of Woodhead Eco Trees on site with us. He’s done a fantastic job of rescuing a big old hawthorn from being swamped by ivy at the west end of the site.

Rob is a great local business and expert at what he does. We highly recommend his services for any tree work you might have! Woodhead Eco Trees

More blockwork and pipes this week… Three courses of blocks are now all but complete around the main outer wall, and this brings us up to what will be the final internal floor height. We have drainage pipes buried around the outside of the main wall footings for rain and waste water. We have super-insulated pipes (the big grey ones with two pink ones in the middle) in place under the blockwork, which will be what carries hot water from our heat pump to the underfloor heating and our hot taps. And we have internal rooms nearly full mapped out with blockwork, including linteled gaps in the ladies bathroom wall where the loos will be!

A busy week for blockwork! Blocks for the three base courses all around the hall were delivered and largely installed this week. Extensions to foundations were completed and the steelwork bases were permanently sealed with concrete. Delivery was also taken of the decorative buff natural stone that will be the visible outer to the base layers of the wall below the final timber cladding.

Steelwork done, TRF are back on site and pressing on with the next stages! This week, the central access road that had been laid across the green was reduced in height to match the new level of the foundations behind. A couple of extensions to the foundation concrete were made, and ducting was laid for power and heating connections between the main hall building and the outbuilding at the west end. Blocks were delivered for the first layers of our walls!

Next stages are excavating and laying foundations for the outbuilding and getting some blocks laid on the main hall!

Well it’s been very quiet for a few weeks while we waiting for the steel to manufactured but it was all action this week! Our steel frame was delivered on Tuesday and by the end of Thursday it was all up! OCA went down to the site on Wednesday lunch time, expecting to see maybe one or two posts up, but guys on site already had all the vertical posts in place! There was a bit of a wait for a cherry picker before they could do the higher horizontals, but by the end of week, our new hall was suddenly very much visible…

Not much has changed on site this week, but that doesn’t mean that TRF have been on holiday! All the progress at the moment is behind the scenes. After the steel company scanned the new foundations last week, they’ve been away finalising the designs. For those interested in a bit of a technical detail, we can now share the final designs below! We should start to see real visible progress early next month…

It’s been a relatively quiet week. While the concrete of the foundations is now set and level, we have a bit of a pause while the final tweaks are done to the design of the steel frame. This comes after the steel company came to site to scan the final real position of the foundations for tolerance checks. All approved, and progress is being made behind the scenes for steel going up in the next 2 or 3 weeks! In the meantime, SPEN have been on site again and we have the (third…) final junction box in place for the build team to take their power from. Our architects from CSY joined OCA and TRF on site for a slightly soggy monthly progress meeting…!