The build

You can never have enough foundation!! Better safe than sorry.

My little old cottage down west, built on the side of a cliff, was single storey and I, in my wisdom, thought it would be nice to extend upwards to enlarge it. Planning permission was OK but when they came to build there were no foundations whatsoever. The builders had to literally tunnel under the front of the cottage, wriggle under the walls and reinforce the footings. Then they had to build a ring beam on top of the walls to support the upper floor.
It was not one of my better ideas - a financial nightmare!! The builders said it would have been cheaper to knock the house down and build a new one, than tinker about with the old one. At least you'll know exactly what you have from the outset.

Quite agree, it may seem over the top but better do it properly first time round   . They always say the foundations is the unknown element of the build because you never know what you’re going to find . 
This part of the build is costing more & taking longer than expected    . 
Our guesstimate of the gravel we’d need wasn’t even close!! We’re looking at about 1000 ton by time we’ve finished!!
And it’s taking a lot longer because the quarry only has 2 drivers for all the jobs on the island. We’ve not had any gravel deliveries yet this week   .

You sound like you had fun with your extension! It’s all quite scary isn’t it!

looks like a very hefty foundation SC

It’s all turning to ****! It may be time to get the linch mob back together       .
Bob posted some photos of our metal work on fb , because it’s not just you lot getting bombarded with build photos   .
Someone got in contact with Bob saying it didn’t look right. Initially we just thought you cheeky **** ! Turns out after Bob having a very long chat. We’ve been working off the wrong drawings ! 1 , we don’t know any better. 2, that’s all we were sent  . What we’ve been working off is frankly considered to be a little doodle to get a building warrant and not even ****ing close to being detailed enough to build off it! 
If we’d continued as we were apparently our foundations would have cracked in several different places and for different reasons!!
So luckily we’re dealing with an incompetent quarry   ( who knew that was a silver lining    ) otherwise we might have poured concrete over poorly constructed and wrong size & configuration of metal work! So now Bob is trying to get hold of MD of the engineering firm to find out where the drawings we actually need are! 
If they haven’t done them and try and wriggle out of it and we get the drawings done by someone else . It could take 3 weeks.
I don’t even want to think about the potential money we may or may not have wasted!!!

Sorry to hear that SC, I suppose good that you;'ve found out now, sorry if that doesn't help

What a bummer! Maybe you should threaten the MD with enclosure in your metal cage and being buried in the foundations.

So sorry to hear your woes SC. I can't imagine the stress you're going through, but I can imagine the anger and expletives. I thought I'd never say it, but thank goodness for Facebook.

I've liked your post but am not liking whats happened to you. I would be bladdy mad as well.

So sorry to hear your woes SC.  I can't imagine the stress you're going through, but I can imagine the anger and expletives.  I thought I'd never say it, but thank goodness for Facebook.

I couldn’t agree more and like you it comes as a massive surprise to be thankful for fb! The thing that is ( please fill in a string of expletives of your choosing) me is we’ve paid for the plans/ drawings & advice. It’s been like getting blood out of a stone and the stone has been considerably more cooperative than these ****! 


veggie will now understand why I chose Terry Pratchett    . You couldn’t make this stuff up !

Absolutely love Terry Pratchett - I've read them all.

“Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one. But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”

So true