Paving And More

Paving for the side of the house is finished. Being an old house, we were always going to have problems with cracks in the wall. One side in the formal lounge room is particularly bad. The engineer had a look at it when he came out to do the soil sample and suggested that we underpin that wall to prevent further movement, and pave that side of the house to help with water drainage. Water had been collecting on the ground with nowhere to go to, making the ground soft and causing it to sink.

One of the builders that we're looking at engaging, Nick Thorne has been really good and quickly sent his people out to work on this for us. But when they went to excavate the bluestone foundations of the house, they discovered that it had already been underpinned. Hopefully with better drainage the ground will settle or we will have to look at another solution. Now that the paving is in place, we just need to get on with the renovation so we can fix the roof for the verandah and allow for better drainage. And then we'll give it a year for the soil to settle and then revisit the problem. Sigh... guess we're not painting the formal lounge room anytime soon.

We decided to dig up the brick pavers at the back of the house (which will have to be dug up for the renovations anyway) and use them to pave the side of the house. This allows the paving to match with the existing pavers that are at the front of the house. As for the paving at the back, that will have to wait till after the renovations and they will match the pavers that we will use for the verandah and the back of the house.

#paving #waterdrainage