It's been a while since we updated the construction blog of
Our House. But today, 23rd October, the digger arrived again! We are late in the year to do this job, everything got late after various timetable issues throughout the summer and especially in September, when certain events just suddenly made all time for this evaporate.
Before the winter can set in fully, we need two more things doing to Our House. First, a special drainage pipe is installed all around the house, which prevents too much water from creeping under the foundations. In Finnish, this pipe is called "salaoja" or "secret ditch", which refers to its being invisible under ground. This is achieved by a special plastic pipe, which has lots of holes to let water in. The ring of these pipes around the house decent to one low point, and from there away from Our House. The first photo shows the trench being dug.
On the next photo you can see how the trench with the pipe is filled again with a special type of gravel. This gravel allows water to flow easily to the pipe, and once it enters the pipe, the easiest way out for the water is to follow the gradient along it to where we want the water to exit. The device on the tripod in the background is a laser, which provides a reference level in order to make sure the pipe has the correct gradient everywhere.
The first set of these pipes were put into the already frozen ground today. These pipes easily click into each other, a process in progress in the photo above.
Tomorrow the work will continue. After that, a layer of sand will be spread across everything, and then it'll be time for
FinnFoam again, a layer of insulation preventing the ground under Our House from freezing. So there'll be more on the blog as we go along.
Photos: Thomas Ulich.
