Washout Friday!

Well Friday 5th September we both took the day off work, hired the digger & dumper, ordered the stone and were on site at 9am! 

Of all days it was a total washout of a day with more rain in one day that you would get in a month! The stone lorries came but our entrance was not wide enough.  So thankfully the site next door let us drop the 2 lorry loads of hardcore on their site!

So our goal for the day was changed to widening the entrance so we can get the stone deliveries as well as the deliveries for the rest of the build over the coming 6-10 months.   Our goal for the weekend was originally to get in all the stone for the entrance, mark out the driveway, the front and back of the house and by the shed by digging these areas out about 1 foot and then lay the stone over the weekend.  This now looked unlikely to happen. 

Chris got on the digger and ploughed away to add another 12ft clearence to the entrance, trees & hedges and old stone wall was removed.  

We had till 2-3pm to complete and let the stone delivery team know we were on track for them to delivery the rest of the load at 4pm.  Chris was on the digger and I was to use the dumper which he would fill and I would empty up the side of the site.  I was nervous on the dumper, combined with the very wet weather and got to work - unfortunately when I drove the dumper upto Chris in the digger I couldn't brake it!!!! Panic!! All I could see was Chris's face of terror as I slowly ploughed into him!!! Cripes I thought I was about to kill him and he thought the same thing too screaming at me to brake, but I could not manage it very well but fortunately I did just in time!!!! This scared the life out of me and that was that for me and the dumper!!! Never ever again it is not a machine for me!!! Thankfully after our 5 minute scare we got back to work and Chris continued to dig away with the digger.  

We were getting there and despite the rain we thought we would be back on track in the afternoon! We broke through another 12ft of the hedging and cleared it out.  I dried out and warmed up in the van and went to the local village shop for lunch.  When I got back and called over to Chris only to discover he jumped out of the digger because the track fell off the digger!!! We had to call the hire shop to get them to come out and fix it. The rain had been so heavy that the entire driveway was sticky and moving was a nightmare.  We waited 1-2 hours for him to come and fix the track on the digger.  We knew then we would not be ready to receive the rest of the stone that day so delayed it to Monday, as Chris also took Monday off work so we would complete the work we need to complete this weekend.