Who marks out the site?

[dnoble]

Probably an obvious answer to this but I'm planning an MBC timber frame and getting quotes for doing the groundwork which involves digging a massive rectangular hole and half filling with compacted hardcore.

I have a basic site plan which was used for planning app etc showing the position of the building.

Who can actually accurately mark out the site in real life? I would do it myself but am anxious it'll end up being wrong and have to move 1 foot to the left.

I am getting a structural engineer to plan a retaining wall at one end but presumably I need some kind of surveyor?

Dan

[Pete]

I actually dug out our site down to the level required. I went approx 1 metre wider all round to give me plenty of room and saved myself £3500 in the process.

[dnoble]

Well done! Did you use a digger? Burt it's actually the accurate marking out of where the house goes I need to sort out

[Pete]

2 hours ago, dnoble said:

Well done! Did you use a digger? Burt it's actually the accurate marking out of where the house goes I need to sort out

Yes. Our house is a rectangle so just transposed the site layout plan onto the site and made it wider as I said previously.

[dnoble]

OK maybe I could do it myself then? There doesnt seem to be any objective siting in the plans other than the distances from neighbours properties, so I suppose as long as I respect these, keep it the right size and the angles all square, maybe it's more straightforward than I thought?

[JamesP]

We set out and did the ground works ourselves, made some timber profiles, Measure the diagonals as well. We took many hours to get it right. Just took a measurement from an existing fixed point on the site to start. Extended 2m out on all sides as well. We will have more digging out todo once house nearing completion. 

 

Edited September 4, 2017 by JamesP

[Gone West]

5 hours ago, dnoble said:

Who can actually accurately mark out the site in real life?

 

You can easily. Make the area a little larger than the plans and mark out with wooden pegs and string lines. Mark out the string lines on the ground with spray paint. Make sure distances to boundaries are correct and corners are square. Ours was a complex shape so took a while double checking everything but was relatively straightforward. We hired a digger with operator for £370 and he dug out around 90 tons of soil which he piled up in the orchard next door.

 

[ProDave]

I did the same as Peter. Stripped the top soil off part of the site where the house was going down to a level base.  I then got about 10 tons of hardcore and spread that, just to give a more firm surface that was less likely to get chewed up by the digger tracks.

 

Then as Peter, I marked out the centre of each wall and marked with floor marking paint. Checking measurements for length, and diagonals to ensure it was square.

 

 

I then dug the trenches, it being easy to dig to a line marked as the centre of where you want it.

 

 

When the builders turned up, the first thing they did before pouring concrete was set up their profiles. They did not believe that this method would have got the trenches in the right place. At the end of the day they agreed it was all spot on.

 

 

 

[worldwidewebs]

This was the one (well, 1 of about 4) area that MBC screwed up on.

 

I'd had a site topological survey done previously so I got them back to mark out the area of dig and back again to mark out the exact area that the house should go once the base had been laid. Despite marking out with blue paint, steel pegs and setting the levels it was all ignored - I came back from work to find that they'd removed the steel pegs (they were in the way!) and covered the paint with the blinding material. They did wonder what it was for apparently!!!

 

So, the moral of the story is to treat everyone as an idiot - most people are. And realise that experience is not the same as ability. 

[JamesP]

Exactly as Prodave and Peter.. I think we moved 500 tonnes +. We used a 3 tonne digger which was a bit small tbh. I set the profiles as far back as possible on the site so we could reuse them, checked again for the blockwork after the concrete pour. It was all quite enjoyable.