A new year, a newly formed building platform

It's an exciting start to the New Year for us, with our newly formed building platform, thanks to our earthworks starting just before Christmas.



So far this part of the build has taught us first-hand why having a contingency fund is so important when embarking on earthworks in preparation for a house-build.

It started with our engineer completing further geo-technical assessments of our land. That assessment came back slightly differently than expected, which meant that the cut and batter of the bank was slightly different than the original plan. As a consequence, our build platform is smaller than we first expected it to be.

Unfortunately this has had a knock-on effect. One corner of our house now has to be built right on the edge of the receding bank, which means that corner will now need to have its foundations specifically designed by an engineer. <Cha-ching>

With the house positioned there, we now won't be able to walk around that corner of the house, which decreases the amount of usable land we'll have. Not a problem, we thought. We'll just whack some of the dirt we're cutting away down the bank to extend the platform out the front of the site. After some discussion with engineers, surveyors and our site foreman, it turns out we'll need to build a landscaping fence to do that, which our engineer will need to design. <Cha-ching>

As the cut progressed, our engineer determined that there are two segments of the bank that are highly fractured, which he recommends we install some steel meshing to the area, or build a timber fence in front of the bank. <Cha-ching>

We were expecting our building consent to be granted before Christmas, but as with everything to do with the build, it too has been delayed.

Our section is zoned for Specific Engineer Design wind zone, which doesn't necessarily mean that it's windier than anywhere else in Wellington. It just means that the Council hasn't yet tested that area, so an engineer needed to determine the wind speed for our site, taking into account various factors, such as topography of the land, the direction the site faces, etc. Our wind loading is 53m/s, which is 2m/s more than the category 'Very High Wind Zone', placing our section in the highest wind zoning.

To cut a long story short, we now need extra bracing, extra trusses, extra strapping, extra studs, and, you guessed it, extra engineering, particularly regular site inspections during the build. <Cha-ching cha-ching>

So, we enter 2011 behind schedule, with quite a bit less contingency money and nothing really to show for our spending of it. But, ah well, that's what building is all about.