Unfortunately Yannis "the concrete man", who had overseen the excellent in-situ concrete work undertaken throughout the house construction work so far, was unable to continue due to ill health.
In order that the project did not fall further behind schedule a replacement was sought at short notice. The difficulty was that after the Summer heat the cooler dry weather of Autumn is the peak "building season" so we were lucky to find someone who was able to fit the relatively minor work of constructing the "wings" into their hectic schedule.
After the shuttering was constructed the concrete was ordered and due to be poured on the following Wednesday. However unbeknown to me the ready mix company relised late on the Monday evening that they had no other deliveries on the Wednesday so it would be coming on the Tuesday!
The same process of pouring some of the concrete, vibrating to consolidate and then adding more concrete vibrating again etc. was to be undertaken. Unfortunately when I arrived at the site for the concrete pouring on the Wednesday it was of course already done! More importantly it emerged that the vibrating machine had broken down whilst in the middle of pouring the concrete and there was an hour's delay whilst a spare part was found and transported to the site.
I remember Yannis and his team also experiencing the same problem but with his experience Yannis always made sure he had a back up vibrating machine available on site.
The result of this delay was that despite a long period of vibrating with the repaired machine there were flaws in the finish when the shuttering was removed.
I had the engineers check out the results and they assured me that structurally all was okay and that the finish would be filled and smoothed to retain the crisp look that the house design demands.
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| Working on the east "wing" shuttering. |
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| Shuttering at the rear of the east "wing". |
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| East wing shuttering removed. Note blemishes on corner and front face. |
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| The first section of the west"wing" completed. |
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| Rear of east "wing" showing the poor surface resulting from the vibrating machine breakdown. | |
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| A general view from the roof looking east on a glorious Autumn day. |
