Hello construction fans, Lotti here again.  Over the past few weekends, me and my construction team have been hard at work again on site. Finally, the destruction has finished and we have started to build up layers of tyres in the bottom of the trenches.

Now the bottom of the trenches has been levelled, we spread aggregate thinly and compacted and levelled it to provide a firm level base for the tyres.

We placed the tyres butted up against one-another along the length of each trench, except for gaps to allow services (water and waste pipes) through.  Each tyre was filled with pea gravel, making sure the rim is fully packed, as this is the main weight-bearing area for the next tyre in the stack.  

After minimal instruction, the two-Legs seemed to get the hang of it, though I had to keep an eye on them.

After about 4 days’ work, we had two trenches filled with four layers of tyres, all packed and level.  This brought these foundations up to soil level.  Then we back filled the inner side of each trench with waste soil from the excavations back to ground level.  On the outer side, we filled up to the height of the first two tyre courses.  The layers above will be filled with gravel over land-drain pipes to form a french drain to keep the base of the walls dry.

By the end of today (2nd November) we had completed two full wall lengths, up to ground level.  When I say we, I mean the team, under my direction.  By the end, they were so good at it, I was able to attend to other more weighty matters indoors……

In late August, lorries started to arrive at the the yard carrying the components for the roof cladding.

Curved steel roof sheets with condensation reduction coating on the underside.

A week or so later, DPL steel Buildings were back on site, to put the cladding onto the frame, to give us a roof, before the walls!  Unconventional, but you can explain this stuff to the Two-Legs time and time again and they just look confused and chuck the ball again, so I have to fetch it back! Evolution has some funny ways yer know….

Anyway, after four very long days in hot sun, the DPL fellas completed a very splendid looking barn, fit to have a house built under it!

The foundations for the walls (as opposed to the frame and roof) are to be made of discarded car tyres.  Over the last 6 months or so, the two-legs have been travelling here and there (under my supervision, obviously) around the county, collecting tyres from all sorts of places.

So far, we’ve got tyres local companies, Tanvic in Melton Mowbray, Geoff Fowkes in Ibstock, and Oakham Tyres, Oakham.  We have around 200, but we’ll need around 450, with footing depths of around 80cm (4 tyres below ground level).

Early in  July, DPL Structures Ltd (a local company – who also dismantled the barn from its original site) dug the footing holes for barn plinths on site.

On the hottest day of the year the concrete was poured (a standard concrete mix, but including between 21 and 35% fly-ash to reduce cement content).

Into this they set the 4-bolt sets to secure the barn stanchions.

Later in the month, DPL commenced erection of the frame itself . It only took them  2 days to put it all up!

This is me checking out the final result – actually something to show for all the effort and noise!!

The bolts receiving the foot of a leg

After removal of larch trees from the site in early autumn 2012 (after the bird breeding season)  by Rob, Katie and Chris, the site was levelled.

After I showed them the way….

Brian, from local contractors H Duffin & sons, came with his JCB and levelled the site.  Over two days, he removed nearly 1ft of soil from the site, which was moved to the back of the site, next to the road.  Here it was added to a 10ft high bund, to shield the site from roads noise.  This process brought us all into much closer contact with the site’s former use as the village tip.  We found hundreds of old bottles, as well as tons of rotting metal, cattle bones and boot soles!