Catch-up Blog 9: Committing to Site Setup (Oct 2018)

Site setup could commence without building consent, so we took a punt in September and organised Aqualine to start on 1st October without the consent in hand...  We could only go so far with excavation and preparation of the building site – pouring concrete for the house piles wouldn’t be possible for example, but we could excavate the caravan site, container site and building site, trench in the drains and power and water to the caravan and container sites and put in the engineered fill to level all of the sites.

Preparation of the caravan site and container site would disturb some of our native planting from 2017, requiring a couple of days work transplanting… the moral of this story is to plan ahead to minimise rework, but to be prepared for investing in rework as your understanding of what is needed grows and your plans evolve - manage this balancing act as well as you can and don’t become paralysed waiting to have everything planed in detail.  We have invested in properly developing the caravan and container locations as future parking, storage or even a possible studio accommodation site, they also have power and water on to them now making our stay on-site during the build far more comfortable.

As it happened, the day we started excavation was the same day we received building consent from Hastings District Council.  So, we would be able to do all of the earthworks in one hit, getting fully prepared for setting up the profiles and formwork for the concrete slab.  This makes a big difference when you are in a rural location as carting out heavy equipment to site costs money and time.  Commit and make progress with whatever you can is the moral of this story – plan for the best and prepare for the worst, momentum is hard to create and easy to lose, so keep moving forwards and it will all work out.

The day we started was also the day that Alessandra flew in, and she visited Nga Kereru with Lesley and John that morning for the first time, a great day!!