Day 3 - An Inspector Calls

A warmer start to the morning and lots to be getting on with. The plan for the day was to finish digging out the trenches for the drainage leading into the soakaway and also to expose the foundations on the corner of the existing rear extension so that the Building Inspector could give it the once over.

This would be a critical moment early on in the build as it could potentially add £1000's to the budget if the existing foundations have to be underpinned and strengthened, not to mention a delay in the schedule.
Thankfully, the sun was shining on us, and the Building Inspector said the footings were fine and we were OK to carry on. However, he did have concerns regarding (a) the drainage layout at the side of the house and (b) the strength of the floor joists above the garage. 

Ground Floor Plan

After a bit of head scratching and discussion  we came up with a good alternative for the drains which thanks to the good will of our contractors, will only add an additional £350 and regarding the floor joists, the potential "weak" spot in the stud wall dividing the garage from the WC, could be strengthened with a flitch beam as shown in the diagram below:

Flitch Beam - timber joists sandwiching a steel plate and bolted together

The digging out of the drainage trench to the left of the garage (what will be the alleyway between our house and our neighbour's) will take a fair bit of time as it's concrete which needs to be broken up with a pneumatic breaker. It'll also be fairly deep and will have to be shored up by plywood sheets supported by lengths of 4x2 timber.

It'll be a busy and undoubtedly noisy day tomorrow!