Leaderboard

Because our site was on a slope we always envisaged having a walk-in basement, that’s a basement surrounded on three sides by the slope and open at the front to a lawned area. The architect recommended a structural engineer to design the basement walls, what I hadn’t realised until it was too late, was that the design would be way over-engineered. His design is for a 200mm thick steel reinforced poured concrete wall tied into the basement slab. The slab and retaining wall contains about 52m3 of concrete and 3.5 tonnes of steel. The only saving grace is that it sits on an insulated raft designed by Hilliard Tanner and has UFH pipes cast into the concrete. So here we are just about to start pumping the concrete into the insulated slab. Next, the ICF basement walls were put together, a bit like Lego. Here you can see the completed walls braced and ready to receive 26m3 of concrete. Finally, the lounge section of our insulated raft foundation was done to complete the three-stage foundation project. In this photo, you can see the insulated raft and its steel ring beam under construction.