Council wrangling, piles, the beginnings of a slab

I told myself I wouldn't update again until the slab was poured, but the amount of to and fro and stress and drama of the last month deserves a post of its own.

I won't bore you with all the nitty gritty details, but suffice it to say that the process of subdividing our land, and then getting all the consents and approvals required so that we can build our house has been a total pain in the ass.

I'm not someone who loses sleep stressing about things, but this has stressed me out.  There's been months of very little progress, and then all of a sudden everything is needed NOW IMMEDIATELY, and it's a frantic scramble.  I haven't heard of many other people having these difficulties so I have to assume the problem is us, but I also have no idea how we could have done things differently.

Anyway!! Boring.

That is all (hopefully) behind us. And there has actually been tangible progress onsite in between the multiple phone calls per day to council, surveyor, lawyer, back to council... I'm stopping. I am. This is not interesting.

What is interesting is huge cranes!

Those are some very expensive logs.  If we ever have a major seismic event, our house won't budge.

Sand!  Plumbing!  Electrical!  Boxing up for concrete!

Polystyrene!  Portaloo!

I've had a few people on Facebook and Instagram ask about the polystyrene, to which my educated response was, "I dunno."  Luckily I've since done my research and it's a RibRaft foundation, which is seismically strong (for those of you in other locations, this is a major consideration in shaky NZ), insulates and helps to raise the floor height.  Or something.

It's becoming easier to visualise now that the shape is in place, and we can see generally where things are with the location of pipes etc.  The photo above is looking through the house from the master bedroom. The far end by my car is the garage, with the front door just to the right of it.

We're hoping to have the concrete poured next week, weather permitting.  Yesterday it poured with rain and now it's blowing a 120kph gale so cross your fingers for some calm and sunny weather for us.